Hugh Jackman Almost Never Played Wolverine — And 7 Other Things We Bet You Didn't Know

Wolverine Was Supposed To Belong To A Completely Different Actor

Before Hugh Jackman ever put on the claws, the role was locked up by Scottish actor Dougray Scott — until Tom Cruise refused to let him leave Mission: Impossible II in time to start filming X-Men. Scott later said the decision was completely out of his hands, and Jackman only got the part because producer Lauren Shuler Donner suggested bringing in the relatively unknown Aussie as a replacement.

He Was A Musical Theater Guy Long Before He Was A Superhero

Years before claws and adamantium, Jackman was cutting his teeth on stage as Gaston in the Australian production of Beauty and the Beast and as Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard. By 1998 he'd landed a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for playing Curly McLain in a West End revival of Oklahoma! — proof this was never a side gig, it was the whole foundation.

That Tony Award? It Was For Playing A Bisexual Pop Star, Not A Mutant

In 2004, Jackman won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for playing Australian songwriter Peter Allen in The Boy from Oz on Broadway, a role that also earned him the Drama Desk Award the same year. The show got mixed reviews overall, but Jackman's performance was singled out as the reason to buy a ticket.

The Wolverine Body Was Basically A Second Full-Time Job For Two Decades

Jackman's transformations evolved with different trainers over the years — for Deadpool & Wolverine he reportedly pushed his intake up to 6,000 calories a day during the bulk phase before cutting down, and back in 2016 he officially joined the '1,000-pound club' after putting up a combined bench, deadlift, and squat total of over 990 pounds in a single day. Somewhere in between all that, he was also documenting 4 a.m. gym sessions and cold-plunge recovery on Instagram under the hashtag #BecomingWolverineAgain.

He's One Award Away From An EGOT — Thanks To A Circus Movie

Jackman already had the Tony (2004) and an Emmy (for hosting the 2004 Tony Awards) in his pocket when The Greatest Showman soundtrack won Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media at the 2019 Grammys, putting him three-quarters of the way to the EGOT. All he's missing now is the Oscar — and yes, Les Misérables got him agonizingly close.

His Best Non-Wolverine Performance Might Be A Victorian Magician

In Christopher Nolan's The Prestige, Jackman played a magician locked in an obsessive rivalry with Christian Bale's character, a role Nolan cast him in specifically because Angier needed "a wonderful understanding of the interaction between a performer and a live audience." Jackman based his performance on a real 1950s magician named Channing Pollock, and the movie remains one of the clearest proofs that Wolverine was never the ceiling of his range.

He Basically Starved Himself For Les Misérables — On Purpose

Playing an emaciated ex-convict in Les Misérables meant Jackman spent hours a day in the gym while surviving on almost no carbs, and famously went without water for 36 hours before shooting the opening prison scene to look properly gutted. He called it "almost more physical... than an X-Men movie," and the performance earned him a Golden Globe and his first Oscar nomination.

He Actually Meant It When He Said He Was Done With Wolverine — Then He Wasn't

After Logan, Jackman has admitted he deliberately declared the role finished, saying he "needed to claim it as the end" to protect the story he wanted that movie to tell. But watching the first Deadpool film planted a seed — he pictured a 48 Hrs.-style buddy dynamic with Ryan Reynolds — and he eventually reversed course entirely, admitting, "I've told everyone that I'm done... then I went, 'You know what? I change my mind.'" That change of heart became Deadpool & Wolverine, a billion-dollar hit and the first time Wolverine ever crossed into the MCU.