Sometimes an actor’s portrayal of a character is so perfect it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role. Hugh Jackman is one of those actors. He did such a great job of bringing Wolverine to life that he went on to reprise the role for almost two decades.
Although the actor has become synonymous with the superhero now, he came very close to being fired from the role while shooting X-Men in 2000.
The shocking revelation was made by Hugh Jackman himself during one of his concert tours for “The Man. The Music. The Show” in London. Speaking to crowd the actor recalled the incident…
“Five weeks into shooting X-Men, I was on the verge of getting fired. The head of the studio pulled me aside at lunch and he told me that they were worried that they weren’t seeing on camera what they’d seen in the audition.”
“And the very next day the director pulled me aside and told me exactly the same thing. So clearly they’d been talking and I was freaking out. I’m thinking, oh, this is the talk you get before you get fired. And this was the biggest break of my career by a mile up to this point.”
In a recent interview, he went into greater detail about his setback on set. He explained that after venting to his wife, Deborra-Lee Furness, she gave him some invaluable advice.
“I was told that things weren’t really working out as they hoped. I was about to get fired from my first Hollywood movie – the biggest of my career. I was angry, I went home to my wife and I complained and moaned about this person and that person.”
“She listened to me very patiently for about an hour and finally she just said, ‘Listen, I think you have just got to trust yourself. You are worrying way too much about what everyone else is thinking. Just go back to the character, focus on that. Trust your instincts. You’ve got this.’”
“To me that was love. Someone who believes in you when you don’t fully believe in yourself.”
The advice clearly worked wonders because he went on portrayed Wolverine in X-Men, X2: X-Men United, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, X-Men: First Class (cameo), The Wolverine, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and X-Men: Apocalypse.
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