Hugh Jackman’s Wife Stopped Him From Quitting ‘Les Miserables’

Hugh Jackman took a break from saving the world as Wolverine to perform in the musical Les Misérables . But he almost backed out of the feature at the last minute because of the mounting pressure he felt for the movie.

Hugh Jackman almost backed out of ‘Les Misérables’

Jackman felt he had big shoes to fill when he was cast as Jean Valjean in the 2012 musical. There had been several adaptations for Victor Hugo’s 1862 famous novel ever since the story’s inception. Keeping in mind the amount of actors who portrayed Jackman’s Jean Valjean before him, the actor started to get cold feet.

“Honestly, there was a moment where I was considering pulling out [of the film],” Jackman once said according to Contact Music. “I’d just had a bad day at rehearsals and all I kept hearing was all the other great people that played the role, and I said, ‘I’m going to do ’em a favor; I’m going to pull out now; someone else should take it.'”

But Jackman’s wife Deborra-Lee Furness helped stop him from making what could’ve been a mistake.

 “[My wife] took me off that ledge, and she was right,” Jackman said. “Thank you, baby. Thank you for always being right. I’ll never doubt you again.”

Hugh Jackman felt being in ‘Les Miserables’ was like shooting a nude scene

Even after deciding to commit to the project, doing Les Misérables took some adjusting to. With a few exceptions, Les Misérables would be sung live by Jackman and his co-stars. Which Jackman felt was an important part of the film.

“You don’t want it to feel like it’s all done in a recording studio, nor do you want it to look like the actors are miming the whole thing. I wouldn’t know how to do that. I think it would take more work to mime it than to sing it,” he once told Vulture.

Additionally, Jackman asserted that he had to sing one of the film’s most important songs on the first day. Which helped since it meant the other songs he’d be singing afterwards would be a bit easier. In a 2012 interview with Entertainment Weekly, he compared the entire situation to doing nude scenes.

“When you take your clothes off, everybody is self-conscious, but within an hour … It’s nothing. I definitely felt more and more comfortable as we went. I think everybody did. It would become normal. Everyone was singing. Even the crew was singing,” Jackman said.

Hugh Jackman once shared how a thief almost sabotaged his ‘Les Miserables’ audition

Jackman’s Les Misérables audition almost didn’t happen thanks to a random encounter with a troublemaker. The Greatest Showman star remembered the meeting happened while he was doing his regular routine to prepare for singing auditions.

 “When I do any singing audition, I go to my singing teacher first, so I went to Joan Lader, and I had a half-hour singing lesson just to get warmed up. And she said, ‘You should ride your bike to get your breath going,’ so I ride my bike to 16th Street and the audition is about 20 blocks down,” Jackman once told The Tonight Show (via Daily Actor).

It was then Jackman ran into someone who he felt looked a little suspicious.

“And I remember pulling up in front of my singing teacher’s building and I’m locking up the bike and you know when you just see someone a little dodgy, and they’re looking at you and they know you know they’re dodgy, and you’re just looking? I’m doing the extra lock on my bike. I go into my singing lesson and I come back and the wheels have gone off my bike… I was like, ‘No,'” he said.

But Jackman didn’t let this discourage him.

“Because you don’t want to warm up and then be too cold for the audition, I left it with 15 minutes [to spare]. So I come out, I’ve got the frame of my bike, I’ve got 20 blocks and 15 minutes to get there. I literally ran with my bike on my shoulder, can’t put it in a cab, and I get to the [audition] and I run up the two flights of stairs and I’m like, ‘Hugh Jackman… I’m ready.’ I literally felt like I was straight out of drama school,” he said.