Hugh Jackman: Oklahoma! nearly blew my chances of playing Wolverine

Screen star: Hugh Jackman spoke at the official naming of Virgin’s new X-Men: Days of Future Past train

1 April 2014

He has been playing Wolverine in the X-Men movies for 14 years. But Hugh Jackman has revealed a London stint in musical Oklahoma! almost scuppered his chances of being cast as the hero.

The 45-year-old star played the lead in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical in 1998 — a role which first brought him fame outside his native Australia.

But the busy schedule of the Royal National Theatre’s production meant he struggled to attend his Hollywood audition for the 2000 movie X-Men.

He told the Standard: “While I was doing Oklahoma! I did my initial audition for X-Men in London. I went with a perm in my hair in between the matinée and the evening show. They basically said, ‘Interesting but lose the perm and the Southern cowboy accent’. That was 15 years ago.

“I almost lost the possibility of that job back then because I didn’t get cast until six months later.

“At my first audition they said, ‘We love you and want to bring you to America’. I said, ‘I can’t I’m doing a show’. They said, ‘Just take a show off’. I said, ‘You don’t understand — you can’t just take a show off, not for an audition!’

“They said fine — we’ll send you on Concorde. I remember being so thrilled.”

Jackman, who reprises his role as Wolverine in X-Men: Days of Future Past, said he is still happy to take the Tube and the Subway, in New York, despite his A-list status.

He added: “It’s the best way to get around in terms of getting noticed, because no one expects you to get on a train. And also on the Subway and the Tube the internet doesn’t work, which is great.

“People go off in their little world and listen to music and read, and they look at you like, ‘Man, that guy looks like Hugh Jackman’. And so I never get bothered.

“Last time I went on a train it was about two weeks ago — I went on a class excursion with my daughter. Absolutely no-one spotted or stopped me. It’s either that or my career’s over...”