Quotes of the Day
When, as a youngster, Hugh Jackman crossed the street on his way to school, he would doff his little blue woolen cap to the drivers who stopped for him. It's not that he is excessively well-mannered, although he is, or that he grew up in a particularly genteel part of Sydney, Australia, although he did. It was one of the school's rules. And Jackman, who went on to be head boy of his expensive, tradition-bound school (students there still wear kilts), was always the type who played by the rules.
Until now, that is. Jackman, 35, has spent the past three years assembling a sturdy little pre-movie-star career, adding a few heroes in turmoil (notably Wolverine in the X-Men movies) to a clutch of swoony romantic interests (in Kate & Leopold and Someone Like You). His next project, Van Helsing, in which he plays a 19th century monster hunter, will be the first movie in which he's the main attraction. So what does Jackman do while waiting for its release? He takes on Broadway in an unknown show called The Boy from Oz.
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This is not a shrewd movie-star-in-training move. Let's forget the fact that Broadway is brutal — the hours, the critics, the repetition. The show itself is an extremely risky venture. It's the life story of Peter Allen, who had maybe five well-known songs to his name, the most popular of which, I Go to Rio, he performed in a top with big flouncy sleeves. Allen's bio has a few points of interest. Despite being weapons-grade gay, he married Liza Minnelli. Despite coming from the Australian outback, he headlined in Vegas, won an Oscar and sold out Radio City Music Hall. But that's not the kind of story arc that would seem fit for a multiplex hero. Recent events have shown that people welcome all sorts of extracurricular ambitions in action stars, but performing 20 songs onstage in loud shirts while dancing may not be one of them.
"I won't lie to you," says Jackman. "In the months leading up to this, I've been more nervous than I have been in a long time. I'm acutely aware I'm putting a lot on the line." Jackman is not unfamiliar with the stage. He was nominated for an Olivier Award for his role as Curly in the West End production of Oklahoma! in 1998. But Oz's success relies heavily — as did Peter Allen's — on charm. Luckily, charm is Jackman's long suit.
When he first turned up at acting school in Sydney, the teachers were determined not to like him. "They admitted it later, after they were my friends," he says with his ready chuckle. "I was very clean-cut, hammy and let's-put-on-a-show. They were very Beckett and Chekhov." But the qualities that made him repellent to the Method types later made him a natural for those extra-credit activities, like being a host on awards shows (he did the Tonys in June) and Saturday Night Live (in late 2001), that get a novitiate supernova noticed. He is already being mentioned as a likely candidate to be the next Bond.
In many ways, Jackman's clean bonhomie and dishy metrosexuality seem to suggest that he's an antidote to such beefy Australian fare as Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson. He is, you could say, the other white mate. But at bottom, what these actors all share is the same inability: they don't know how to be intimidated. Crowe and Gibson are almost recklessness incarnate; saying what they think without regard to the consequences. Jackman, while less impolitic, is game for anything. He has immersed himself in the details of Allen's life and developed a fan's enthusiasm for the performer's oeuvre. Jackman was delighted to hear of rumors that he himself, despite being married with a son, was gay. "It's easy to go from movie set to movie set," he says. "Before you know it, getting back onstage is too big a leap; there are too many reasons not to do it." A large one is that the show may not catch on. But if that is the case, it won't be because Jackman was too big to give it his all. And who wouldn't take their hats off for that?
- Belinda Luscombe