Hugh
Jackman may be the best celebrity ever. Even when studio folks are
rushing him around, cutting his interviews down to ten minutes, he
still gives you his all. It always feels like he’s only talking to
you, even though he’s got 100 more people to talk to today. Hey,
even 10 minutes with Wolverine is not too shabby. In his latest
movie, THE
PRESTIGE,
Jackman plays Robert Angier, a magician whose wife dies when Alfred
Borden (Christian Bale) ties too tight a knot in an escape trick. He
devotes his life to outdoing Borden on stage and their underhanded
sabotage can turn as deadly as his wife’s failed trick.
Talking
about the film proved difficult on a number of occasions, as the
twists and turns lead to major acting choices, but he can’t talk
about them without giving away the twists. So **beware
of spoilers**,
but honestly, if you’re a JoBlo.com reader, you know enough about
movies to figure out what’s going on anyway.
Hugh
Jackman
Did
you have a great interest in magic before doing this movie?
Well,
I was reading about Houdini just for my own pleasure before this,
so maybe there’s something serendipitous about that. I find the world
fascinating, particularly, actually, this era, which is that Houdini
era, because magicians were the movie stars, rock stars of the day.
And there was an incredible contract with the audience at that time,
where, I don’t know if you’re aware, but in
America
, spiritualism was an even larger religion or way of thought than
Christianity.
So
magicians were seen as very real kind of mediators between the other
world and this world. And so people bought into the magician’s
shtick, really, whereas now they don’t. I think the only thing that
is really similar now might be mind reading. The magicians who do
mind reading stuff, I think people are genuinely amazed by that, and
might actually think that there’s something real going on there. But
most stuff, people know it’s a trick. They’re just sort of
interested in how it’s done.
They
call themselves psychics.
Yeah.
Which
part was more fun for you: the on-stage performance stuff, or the
off-stage stuff?
Actually,
I did love the stage stuff. I loved it all. I did a lot of work with
Ricky Jay and Michael Weber on the style of performance, and I
really modeled my character, in terms of style, on a guy called
Channing Pollock, who was a magician of the ’50s, and actually
became a movie star in
France
later. He was American, I think. Or maybe English. But that’s sort
of who I modeled him on. But I enjoyed it a lot. And of course,
without giving too much away, I don’t know how much you can reveal,
but we play a character that has a number of disguises and I really
enjoyed that, creating all those characters and those looks was
terrific.
Can
you relate to the obsession of this guy?
No.
My wife sometimes jokes that she thinks I’m a little bit of a
workaholic, but my definition of a workaholic is someone who can’t
switch it off. I can easily switch it off. When I get
into the car after work, I don’t think about it. I work hard and I
really enjoy it, I’ve always loved acting, but, I can switch it off.
So,
you don’t really relate to this character?
I
think the roles of Christian and I were tailor made. My
character is a very good magician, but Christian’s is a great
magician. My character elevates himself as a magician by his
natural ability on stage, and I’ve had a lot of experience on stage,
so that’s something that comes easily to me. The character, at
the beginning of the film, is fairly optimistic. He’s
ambitious, yes, but also optimistic. He enjoys his life and is
excited by the possibilities. There’s a tragedy that happens
early on, in his personal life, and then, somehow, he’s fueled by
this ambition and the anger over what happened, and it turns him
into being much darker, more intense and, ultimately, very dangerous
person. I wouldn’t say that’s me, but I think the
transformation was a lot of fun for me to play. In terms of the
character at the beginning of the film, it’s fairly similar to me, I
think.
What
was it like working with Michael Caine?
Amazing.
Amazing. I mean, I learned a lot. You learn a lot from working with
someone like Michael. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Michael
Caine’s one-hour video on filmmaking so I was talking to him all
about that. And then I would keeping asking him more questions, he’d
just keep giving me the little techniques all the time. And as far
as being incredibly funny and easy going, I think it was his
birthday. We had a big birthday party. He enjoys his food and wine.
He taught me how to make good chips. I didn’t know he had 22
restaurants. You gotta double fry them.
Hot
oil, really hot oil, and then normal hot oil. You gotta do it slow,
and then semi-hot oil first, and then you gotta take them out and
put them in the fresh oil really hot. That gets them crisp on the
outside. Michael goes into restaurants all over the world, fancy,
fancy restaurants, it doesn’t matter. If he orders chips and they’re
not right, he’ll go in and tell them that. He owns 22 restaurants.
But he’s just a great raconteur, great person to be around, fun, and
adorable. I remember one take, he did something and the crew
laughed. He goes, “I need one more.” Which is not like
Michael, by the way. And I said,
“Why do you want one more?” He goes, “The crew were
laughing. It’s not going to work on film. It’s too big.”
What
was it like working with Christian Bale? He seems very serious.
You
know, he’s not, actually. I think he’s, I would think fair to say,
fairly low-key, as is Chris Nolan. Fairly low-key in they’re just
very relaxed. But Christian, no. He’s got a very cheeky sense of
humor, and quite naughty. But very relaxed. And he’s got a baby,
I’ve got a baby, so we had play dates together and hung out. I
admire Christian because he feels no compulsion to be anything other
than who he is. It doesn’t matter. Ever since Batman, he’s become a
big sort of star and box office…He’s exactly the same kind of
actor he always was, which I think is incredibly truthful and very
dedicated, and unbelievably fearless. I mean, if you look at what he
tackles as an actor,
it’s kind of extraordinary.
You’ve
done action, some romantic comedy, and this thriller. Has straight
character drama been a harder sell to the studios for you?
Well,
not really. Stage, I’ve done only musicals, which is another whole
genre. But I don’t know, you have to ask the studio. I mean, there’s
some films I wanted to do, directors have wanted me to do, and
studios have said, “It’s too big a budget for him.” I want
to do a bit of everything. I want to open up as many doors as I can,
basically. And I feel in a good position now. I feel like I’m
probably in a good a position as anyone to audition and get movies
made. I’m not saying I’m Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio, but I think
I’m fairly blessed.
What
was it like working on The Fountain with Darren Aronofsky?
Oh,
I loved it. I loved it. I’m incredibly proud of the movie, and I’m
thrilled that in some of the lead up, there’s been controversy,
because I expect nothing less from a Darren Aronofsky movie. Someone
was just saying to me, “I heard the movie was booed in
Venice
.” Well, the truth was, at that press screening, about 80% of
the people gave it a standing ovation, and about 20% of the people
booed. And a fight began between the press. And two of them had to
be pulled apart.
And I thought, “That’s a great story! Why wasn’t that story
told?” That’s exactly how the movie, I think, will be seen.
People
will really love it or really hate it?
I’m
shocked, actually, that people are passionately against it. But
that’s fine. I think it’s a confronting movie, but I think
regardless of what you think of the content, it’s visually amazing
production-wise. I think it’d be hard to deny that it deserves
attention, even if you don’t like the subject matter. But hey,
that’s just me.
Any
word on an X-MEN 4?
No,
but there’s a script for Wolverine. We’ve now signed off on the
script. If you know about the history of X-MEN movies, that’s a
revolution for us. We’re a year away from shooting the film and we
have the script. And, by the way, it is unbelievable. It’s a David
Benioff script. He’s probably the hottest writer going around town,
and he was beating down our door to write this movie. It was the
most amazing thing. So, we have this fantastic script. I’ve got a
couple of movies coming out in the next month, and I might be able
to tell you who the director is by then. We’re seriously into
talking about it now.
Is
Wolverine going to fight Batman?
I
want to say yes, just because it’d be fun to see the reverberations
of that, but…