Russell Crowe Gave Hugh Jackman His 2 Breakthrough Roles
Hugh Jackman’s career might have looked a bit different if it wasn’t for Gladiator star Russell Crowe. The veteran actor was up for two roles that had a significant influence on Jackman’s life later on.
Russell Crowe ended up being responsible for Hugh Jackman’s breakthrough
While Jackman was just making a name for himself in the world of cinema, Crowe was already an established movie star. He was already a household name by 1999, and this was before he won his Oscar for Gladiator.
Given his growing star-power, he was eagerly approached for the role of Wolverine in the 2000 X-Men film. But the way filmmaker Bryan Singer described the role of Wolverine discouraged Crowe from doing the part.
“Bryan [Singer] was a friend at the time,” Crowe once explained according to News AU. “And he was really putting the pressure on. If you remember, [in Gladiator,] Maximus has a wolf at the center of his cuirass, and he has a wolf as his companion…which I thought was going to be a bigger deal. So I said no because I didn’t want to be ‘wolfy’, like ‘Mr. Wolf’ …When Ridley [Scott] was cutting the movie, it was inconvenient to keep the dog alive — so the whole wolf thing, no one ever mentions it!”
On The Howard Stern Show, Crowe explained that he wouldn’t have been able to do as good of a job as Jackman, anyway.
“There’s no way I would have ever done that,” he said. “Even if I’d done the film, I wouldn’t have carried it through with the grace and the direction that Hugh gave it.”
The other feature Crowe passed on was Australia. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Jackman shared that he was handpicked for the role by Crowe.
“On X-Men, he was Bryan Singer’s first choice for Wolverine, and he mentioned me also for [Baz Luhrmann’s] Australia,” Jackman said.
Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman finally worked together on ‘Les Misérables’
The 2012 Oscar-nominated film Les Misérables was the first feature where Crowe and Jackman collaborated with one another. Jackman felt it was as nice working with Crowe as it was working with the rest of the film’s cast and crew. Jackman continued receiving support and advice from Crowe even on the film set.
“It’s a real challenge, and we were there for each other. Some days I’d be doing a song, and he’d come support me. And vice versa,” Jackman said. “We got to know each other really well and go around together, having sing-alongs [off-set]. It’s actually one of the great bonuses of this job was getting to know Russell better. I remember him saying, ‘I feel a feeling I haven’t for a long time doing this movie — kind of good-scared.’ This is the scared you want to be, where it takes everything from you.”
He asserted that their shared experiences allowed them to bond even closer. Despite their Les Misérables characters being at odds with each other.
“We were good friends before. We knew each other a lot. And Russell has given me advice several times at key moments in my life that helped with my career,” he said.
Russell Crowe thought Hugh Jackman looked more like Wolverine than he did
Crowe felt at the time that his features didn’t match the studio’s initial image of Wolverine. He’d seen sketches of an earlier version of the anti-hero earlier on, and felt little physical resemblance to the character.
“You know, because look, they show me art and stuff like that, and it’s like it doesn’t look like me. But, I’ll tell you who it looks like, it looks like Hugh Jackman,” Crowe said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.
