Check out Hugh Jackman’s audition for Wolverine in 1999.
Hugh Jackman quickly became in what appears to be overnight. But, the Australian actor has worked on several productions as a producer and actor in film, musical theater and television.
His work in Les Misérables earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and his first Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in 2013.
But, it will essentially be the X-Men that would skyrocket Hugh Jackman’s career. Jackman would replace Dougray Cott in Bryan Singer’s X-Men. According to a CBS interview in 2006, Jackman’s wife revealed that she advised him not to take the role, a comment that she later told him she was glad he ignored.
Hugh Jackman said preparing for the Wolverine role was tough. To prepare, Jackman commented that he watched several Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry movies and Mel Gibson in Road Warrior. Here were guys who had relatively little dialogue, like Wolverine had, but you knew and felt everything. I’m not normally one to copy, but I wanted to see how these guys achieved it.”
According to an interview with the New York Times, Hugh Jackman was adamant about doing his own stunts for the movie. “We worked a lot on the movement style of Wolverine, and I studied some martial arts. I watched a lot of Mike Tyson fights, especially his early fights. There’s something about his style, the animal rage, that seemed right for Wolverine. I kept saying to the writers, ‘Don’t give me long, choreographed fights for the sake of it. Don’t make the fights pretty.”
Check out Hugh Jackman’s audition tape for Wolverine below:
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