Hugh Jackman Hated Himself After Knocking a Stuntwoman Unconscious on ‘X-Men’
Hugh Jackman has always had a reputation of being one of the nicest actors in Hollywood. So when he accidentally injured a stuntwoman while filming, he was understandably very upset. But the incident taught the actor a valuable lesson about working in Hollywood.
Hugh Jackman learned a lot after accidentally knocking a stuntwoman unconscious
Jackman was still a bit green as an actor when he was cast in the first X-Men film. The movie wasn’t only one of his first major motion pictures, but it was also Jackman’s first time doing an action flick. Especially one on that scale. He was required to engage in several physical stunts that could put both himself and his stunt partner in jeopardy. At times, these sequences could result in real injuries, such as when he accidentally stabbed a stuntwoman with his Wolverine claws.
“On the very first film we had real metal claws and the girl who was playing Mystique, Rebecca Romijn, her stunt double and I were doing a fight sequence in the Statue of Liberty. I went to stab her in the arm, which was part of the choreography, and she’s meant to move her arm away and she forgot and the thing went right into her arm, like an inch,” Jackman once told Express.
The stuntwoman in question laughed off the injury. But another more serious injury also happened while Jackman was filming X-Men where he accidentally knocked someone unconscious.
However, this injury could’ve easily been avoided, as Jackman had a bad feeling about the stunt from the beginning. At the time, he felt he lacked the star-power or influence to voice his concerns. When his instincts proved correct and the stunt went south, it was one of the few times Jackman lost his temper. Jackman vowed to never repeat the same mistake again, and walked away with a valuable lesson about the film industry.
“Film is important. The people making the film are more important,” Jackman once told Success.
Hugh Jackman injured himself in all of the ‘X-Men’ films except one
Jackman is used to doing stunts in the X-Men movies himself, but he knows when to limit himself.
“Yeah. I do a lot of my own stuff, except the stupid stuff like bashing your head against walls or crashing cars and all that jazz. But I did it the right way,” Jackman said in a 2014 interview with Collider.
Still, he’d often walk away with a few injuries after doing these stunts. The 2013 movie The Wolverine, however, was the only time he walked away from an X-Men film physically unscathed.
“I had a good amount of time to prepare, so I built slowly, I hit The Wolverine and this movie without any injuries, which is was the first time – every time I’ve played Wolverine before I’ve carried some kind of injury because I’ve had to race to get ready. I did it slowly, I felt great, I felt great throughout. I felt tired, obviously, and it is harder, I’ll admit that, but I felt really good. Physically for me, I feel better now probably than I did in the earlier films. So that’s not an issue for me. Yet,” he added.
Hugh Jackman’s longtime stunt double described what it was like working with him
Jackman’s stunt double Daniel Stevens worked with the actor many times during his career as a stuntman. He was already used to doing physical work in films like Avengers Endgame and Kong: Skull Island. But he labeled the X-Men films some of his favorite movies to work in.
“Because I did it four times, I felt more connected to the character and helped Hugh develop the fight style of the character,” Stevens told The Sun.
Stevens also gave a glimpse into what the daily minutia of a stuntman looked like, and the rules they had to follow. One such rule was that the stuntman was never allowed to hit the actor they were working with. However, if the actor hit them, they simply had to shrug it off.
“You got to downplay it and make the actor feel good,” Stevens said.
