Hugh Jackman is 11 inches taller than the comic-book Wolverine he played
The comic describes Wolverine as 5 ft 3 in; Hugh Jackman is 6 ft 2 in. To shrink him, directors filmed him from odd angles or from the waist up while co-stars stood on platform soles. The part had been written for Russell Crowe, who passed and recommended the unknown Australian instead.
Jackman was born in Sydney on 12 October 1968 to English parents who had emigrated the year before under the Ten Pound Poms scheme, so he holds British as well as Australian citizenship. After his parents divorced when he was eight he stayed with his father. As a boy he pored over atlases and hoped to be a chef on an aeroplane, assuming planes carried one because they served food.
Acting came late. He took a communications degree, joined a drama class purely for extra credits, and at 22 first considered performing as a career. He declined a part in Neighbours to train at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, where he said he felt like the dunce of the class. On the night of his graduation performance a call came offering a role in the ABC drama Correlli, where he met his future wife, Deborra-Lee Furness. He joked that he had been unemployed for thirteen seconds.
Musicals built his name first: Gaston and Joe Gillis on Melbourne stages, then Curly in the National Theatre's Oklahoma! in London in 1998, which earned an Olivier nomination. Bryan Singer's X-Men (2000) followed, grossing 296 million dollars, although his wife had thought the role ridiculous. He studied wolves, Mike Tyson's early fights and the near-silent heroes of Dirty Harry and Mad Max 2, insisted on doing stunts, and wore the claws around his living room until they felt natural, collecting scars in the process.
He announced that Logan (2017) would be his final outing as the character, though he returned in Deadpool & Wolverine (2024). The stage never let go: he won a Tony in 2004 for playing Peter Allen in The Boy from Oz, hosted the Tony Awards four times, and played Jean Valjean in Les Misérables (2012), earning an Oscar nomination. The Greatest Showman soundtrack brought him a Grammy, and he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2019.
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