Leap of fate

AUSTRALIAN actor Hugh Jackman knows how to make an entrance.

Not for him emerging from a stretch limo or walking down the red carpet with a glamorous woman on each arm. He gets our attention by jumping off a tall building.

The actor, who reprises the comic book role of Wolverine in one of this year’s first blockbuster movies, abseils from the roof of an office block in London before his press conference.

He was doing his bit for the Help For Heroes charity. Few other Hollywood stars would even contemplate such a stunt. But Jackman isn’t your typical A-lister, being one who seems to enjoy the promotion of his work as much as actually making a movie.

He’s an actor who refuses to be typecast. He does musicals (he was Curly in a production of the musical Oklahoma! in London), he hosted the Oscars ceremony and romanced Nicole Kidman in the under-rated epic Australia.

In South African director Gavin Hood, he has found the perfect man to match his vision in bringing Wolverine’s early years to the screen.

The story shows how Logan became Wolverine, the origins of his deadly duel with his brother, Victor Creed, alias Sabretooth, and his doomed romance with Kayla Silverfox.

Jackman looks in tremendous shape, achieved through a punishing training schedule that left him, we are assured, “in the best shape of his life” and enabled him do many of the stunts himself.

“A lot of it is me. I enjoy doing it, I must admit,” he says of the high-powered action sequences.

“I have a bit of a sport background – I wasn’t great at it, but enjoyed it – and a little bit of a dance background. For me, film stunts and stunt choreography is a mixture of the two. So I enjoy doing that and audiences deserve it, too.

“They work out when you’re using a double or face replacement. Whenever you can do it, it helps the audience get into it.”

Wolverine is scared of one thing – flying.

Jackman doesn’t share this fear. He’s one for facing up to his fears. “I remember being so upset with myself that I was scared of heights that I went down every day to the diving board at our school pool. We had a one, three and tenmetre board. I kept jumping off the three until I wasn’t scared. Then I went up to the ten, and I did if for about a month, just jumping until I was no longer scared.

“I hate being frightened of things. I’m not someone who can say, ‘oh, I’m scared of flying, I won’t fly’. Fear seems to creep over every part of your life, so if there’s something I identify as frightening to me, I want to tackle it.”

He applied that same determination getting into shape to play Wolverine. Director Hood recalls that every day at 4.30am he would be training, no matter how late they had shot the previous night.

There’s no doubt, judging by the way many women react on seeing Wolverine’s muscular look, that this is one comic book character with sex appeal. The actor himself gets bashful if the sex god angle is raised. It’s not something he has consciously thought about, he says.

“Except there is a love story, and it’s unusual to see Wolverine genuinely care for someone.”

Seeing Robert De Niro as a psychopathic exconvict in Cape Fear was an inspiration for his physical appearance. “There’s a scene in prison where he takes off his shirt and I was frightened and uncomfortable. There’s something about him that’s so raw and dangerous,” he explains.

“On my last movie (Australia), when you’ve finished galloping on a horse, you can see the veins and muscles. It’s powerful and a little dangerous. That’s what I wanted, the animalistic quality. I didn’t necessarily want to look pretty.”

Hood, on the other hand, knew exactly the effect Jackman’s look would have. “There’s a fantastic shot of Hugh that picks up on vulnerability and physical beauty that he doesn’t have to know about,” says Hood, looking across and smiling at his leading man.

“He’s at the end of a corridor and has an argument with someone, then stops and turns.

Don (McAlpine, director of photography) lit him so beautifully. Hugh initially had his shirt done up. He was getting a radio mic check, the shirt came undone and I said to leave it like that.

“You don’t tell the actor that, but I’m looking through the lens at, first of all, a fantastic close-up of vulnerability and determination.

Then I go to the midshot where you have a sixpack that looks like a 12-pack.

“You never tell him that. He’d be embarrassed; he probably is now. But this is a moment for women in a vulnerable, powerful, magnetic way.”

AS well as toning up, Jackman had to face concerns that Wolverine was going solo after three X-Men movies and had to stand out from other comic book movies. He sees it as neither a spin-off, nor X-Men 4, recognising the need to go beyond all expectations in everything from the story to the character’s emotions.

“To me, it’s just a way of life. You want every movie to be better than the last. That’s just blind ambition probably,” he says.

As a producer of Wolverine, he was involved in all aspects of the production so that when the cameras rolled, he knew everything about the movie. “I was excited by the time we got there,” he says.

“In three films, I played a character with no idea of his past – no idea how old he was, where he’d been or what had happened to him. To have those blanks filled in and to make a film about those blanks was actually terrific.

“Then having someone like Gavin, who was clearly to me a great person for this film. He knows how to tell a story, how to carefully map the emotional journey of a character, as well as handle the size of the movie.

“I can imagine for some directors it would be hard going up to an actor who’s played a part three times already, thinking ‘maybe he knows better than me’. But Gavin pushed me, which is what I wanted.”

■ X-Men – The Last Stand: Film Four, 9pm tonight.

■ X-Men Origins: Wolverine (12A) in cinemas this week