Life Lessons from Hugh Jackman

Welcome to Life Lessons. This week, on the heels of his recent Tony Award Nomination, we revisit our May 2004 cover story featuring the real-life music man Hugh Jackman. At the time of the cover shoot, Jackman was not only at the height of his X-Men fame, but also seven months into his stint playing Australian singer-songwriter Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz. Here, Jackman chats with writer David Furnish about the difference between playing fictional characters and real people, getting attention, and the promise he made the day he finished acting school.

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“On individual levels or on massive levels, when people don’t understand something, they tend to fear it and want to destroy it because it’s the unknown; fear always rises out of the unknown.”

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“[X-Men] gets to all those feelings of being a minority or being misunderstood or being different and not having anyone understand you.”

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“I loved school — I’m what you’d call a chronic learner.”

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“I decided to go on to study drama without ever giving much consideration to how far this would take me in terms of a career. But I loved it.”

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“I’m sure [acting] had something to do with attention seeking. But it was also a way of enlarging my social world. I remember seeing my older brothers and sisters off doing things and going to parties and all that, and the plays and musicals I did were a great social outlet for me.”

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“I’ve always thought that [playing a real person] was one of the greatest challenges, because it’s not just your imagination and the audience’s that you’re appealing to; they’ve literally got images and sounds in their heads, so it’s a fine balance between giving an impression and impersonating.”

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“I’ve been studying at a place called the School of Practical Philosophy since 1992, and it’s become a major part of my life. It gives me a great grounding and understanding of the world around us, and it’s also been incredibly helpful to my acting…You start with working on yourself, then widening that work to helping others around you and the community at large.”

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“It’s ironic that actors, who can slip in and out of roles, often tend to take their own lives so seriously. It’s all a play, after all, and a wonderful one. I think my studies have helped me to put that into perspective and not to dismiss things as trivial or unimportant, but rather to see the roller-coaster quality as part of that inevitable play. I mean, success in this business is very much determined by public opinion, and we all know how fickle that can be.”

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“Inquiry comes first, and acting is just another activity, which is a wonderful extension of that.”

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“When I graduated [drama school] I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to give this everything I’ve got for five years. If nothing happens, I’ll start my own theater company or whatever.’ I’m not going to spend my whole life waiting for the phone to ring. And then things just happened, one after the other.”

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