Hugh Jackman recently described the sense of loneliness he felt while playing Wolverine in the first X-Men movie. The first X-Men movie premiered in 2000, with Jackman playing the role of the gruff and hairy chested Logan, also known as Wolverine, a member of the X-Men most recognizable from his indestructible adamantium claws that protrude from between his knuckles. The X-Men franchise continues to this day, including a spin-off film Logan that centers Jackman's character.

Before X-Men, the Australian-born actor started out in musical theater, with his first role after graduation in 1995 being the part of Gaston in an Australian production of Beauty and the Beast. Since that role, Jackman has graced both stage and screen, winning two Tony Awards along the way, and is currently nominated for a third Tony Award for his performance in The Music Man. Jackman also performed in the 2012 film adaptation of the musical Les Misérables and starred in the original movie musical The Greatest Showman in 2017.

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Now, in an interview with The New York Times, Jackman reveals that during his rise to stardom while filming the first X-Men movie, he felt lonely in part due to his theater roots. He notes that because he came into the X-Men movie as a theater actor from Australia, with not much fame to his name at the time, he felt as though people on set didn't start to connect with him until the studio approved of what he was doing on screen. He explains that having to acquire studio approval before gaining approval from his peers made him sad, and he noticed during the filming of X-Men that a film set often encourages an atmosphere steeped in much more individualism than his experience of stage productions. A full quote of Jackman's experience while filming the first X-Men film can be read below:

There were times when I was doing the first “X-Men,” my first big American movie, when I found it quite lonely. I was mainly from the theater, and you could feel that sense of, “Mmm, it’s a bad smell.” I don’t know exactly when things turned, but when the studio said they liked what I was doing, I could feel everyone coming to me. It made me sad. I realized film was more individual, less of an ensemble. The theater thrives on, and has to have, a feeling of ensemble, or it dies. There’s just no way to get through rehearsals, or eight shows a week, unless you have each other’s backs.

Hugh Jackman as P. T. Barnum in The Greatest Showman

Jackman notes that, although he felt lonely during the filming of the first X-Men movie, that that experience motivates him to this day to make sure that he is doing whatever he can to create a supportive and open work environment on set, whether that set is for film or for the stage. A most recent example includes his efforts to make sure that the child actors in The Music Man still have the chance to be children while performing in a Broadway musical despite the pressure of rehearsing for a professional performance. This collaborative and caring nature that Jackman brings to a set may be, aside from his stellar acting, part of the reason that his career has maintained a level of success for more than two decades.

Jackman's approach to his work and his devotion to an atmosphere in which cohorts are looking out for each other is a quality that undoubtedly makes the sets he is on more enjoyable and arguably more productive places. This ethic in creating more of a community culture at work rather than one focused on individualism, which Jackman attributes in part to cultural differences due to his Australian upbringing, is a useful change not only to a film set, but to any workplace. For both fans of Jackman's ever since his first appearance in the X-Men movies, and for newfound fans as well, he can be seen as Harold Hill in the revival of The Music Man which is currently playing on Broadway in New York City.

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Sources: The New York Times