Sydney only has eyes for Hugh
Turramurra's favourite son zooms onto Cockatoo Island to launch X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
By Jorie Larsen
Looking every inch the action hero, Hugh Jackman choppers onto Cockatoo Island, grabbing a flying fox trapeze and zooming straight onto the set of a morning radio show to promote X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the blockbuster he shot here in his home town of Sydney.
It's Jackman's first appearance on the world stage since wowing an audience of half a billion people as host of the 2009 Oscars in February. Twenty-five years before, Jackman had scrubbed dirty dishes on ferries traversing Sydney Harbour. Now that same sparkling backdrop pales before his star power as he hangs from the rails of a helicopter and waves to a throng of screaming fans waiting for their first glimpse of scenes from the film detonating in cinemas on April 29.
Right now, the 40-year-old Sydneysider is not only People's Sexiest Man Alive, he's Hollywood's hunkiest action man (and its nicest). Jackman has the grace of a dancer, the pipes of a songbird, and the dashing good looks of a model. He's come a long way from singin' and a dancin' in musicals Oklahoma! and The Boy from Oz and even further from his days growing up in Turramurra and working the till at a Wahroonga service station for pocket money.
But today is proof Hugh Jackman has muscled his way into the Big Boys' Blockbuster Club. The local press has even forgiven his Twitter that morning talking about the "Sydney Opera Center", a slip Jackman laughs off as coming from an LA-based publicist.
Dressed all in black, Jackman fronts the world media with the tennis ball-sized bulges of his biceps peeking out ever so slightly. Even positioned against the bleary innards of a rundown warehouse on Cockatoo Island, one of many Sydney locales featured prominently in Wolverine, the spotlight catches the gleam of his pearly whites every time he flashes that leading man smile.
But Hugh Michael Jackman is more than just a pretty face. For this latest installation in the X-Men series, Jackman reanimated the Marvel Comics character of Wolverine that first introduced him to Hollywood in 2000's X-Men and made him even beefier.
Jackman says he modelled the physique of Wolverine on Robert De Niro's character in Cape Fear: "I wanted him to look a little freaky," he explains. "I wanted people to be uncomfortable with him. I wanted him animalistic, with veins!" The actor bulked up by following a strict regiment of egg whites washed down with protein shakes and 3.45am wake-up calls so that he could regularly clock two hours at the gym before a 12-hour workday on-set.
No bulging veins threaten to pop on Jackman when he discusses the pirate versions of Wolverine leaked in cyberspace. If anything, he gets a bit embarrassed. "It's like a Ferrari without a paint job," he says, pointing out that much of the computer-generated special effects had yet to be completed in the leaked varieties on the Web. "You wouldn't take a picture of a bride at 8am before she has her hair and makeup and dress on."
In real life, Jackman is more Labrador than Wolverine. In order to get into character as a pissed off man-beast, he says he kick-started every morning with the coldest shower he could muster.
"I'm not a particularly angry person, but when we're shooting from one o' clock in the morning on, it's very easy to get into character."
Cockatoo Island is Sydney's largest harbour island. It's been a gaol, sanitorium, reformatory school and, now film set. In Wolverine, the island doubles as the laboratory of Col William Stryker (Danny Huston), a perfect fit for a place littered with rusting cranes, dilapidated machinery, and rundown sandstone buildings recalling its glory days as Australia's largest shipyard.
Other Sydney locales lent themselves to XMO:W, including Centennial Park, the inner-city parks of Glebe, the beaches of the North Shore and a 1920s theatre converted into a boxing ring hosting Wolverine against the 700-pound baddie the Blob (Kevin Durand).
The film's story stretches back nearly 150 years, introducing multiple mutants of Team X. The film recreates four wars along the way, depicting brothers Logan (Jackman) and Victor (Liev Schreiber) fighting side-by-side in epic, historical battles. One such battle includes the Allied Invasion of Normandy Beach on D-Day, which was filmed on a Newcastle beach.
"Newcastle's a great double for Normandy. Who would've thought?" says Jackman. "It was actually a beautiful day, and then finally the clouds came in. It was going to look like Home and Away if the clouds didn't come in," he laughs.
But the film also represented Jackman's chance to flesh out Wolverine character. "Sometimes, as an actor, it's easier to play someone a little bit further away from who you are than to be yourself," he explains. "This time I was adamant to everyone working on the film that we didn't look like X-Men 4 in disguise," says Jackman. "I wanted this to look like, visually and stylistically, a deviation."
A deviation it is. Under the direction of Gavin Hood, XMO:W delves into Wolverine's past, filling in the blanks of his previously untold life story. "I think it's always good to know where a person comes from, to understand who he is," Jackman says.
And as a producer this time around, he had a big say. "Being a producer is a bit like being a grown-up whereas an actor is like being a kid," Jackman says. "It took some getting used to."
The actor had a hand in the casting as well as the choice of locations. "The cinema here is world-class. We have world-standard crews and we have incredible locations. Very, very talented people," Jackman boasts.
Contrary to popular rumours, Jackman hasn't been invited to host the Oscars in 2010, despite rave reviews for his versatile work in 09. "If I do get asked, my first question will be, 'Is Beyonce doing it again?'" he laughs, "Because that was a bit of a highlight."
