Wolverine The Movie

Hugh Jackman: From Wolverine claws to a theatre's applause

Character. But as fast as he was putting calories in, he was burning them off, because he was also prepping a two-week run of a song-and-dance show, complete with an 18-piece orchestra, that he’ll launch July 5 at Toronto’s Princess of Wales Theatre. On a June afternoon about a month before his opening, he was holding court in the basement bar of the theatre next door, chatting up such an eager succession of reporters that all he had time to ingest were some nuts and a bottle of vitamin water.

Still, something was working. Jackman, 42, was super-charming, engaged, Aussie accent in full bloom. He made the reporter before me blush by telling her she was the spitting image of his first girlfriend, when he was 14. “She dumped me at a bus stop,” he said. “She was crazy,” the reporter managed to stammer. When I faced him, he looked tall (he’s 6-foot-3) and trim in a short-sleeved polo shirt. But then he crossed his arms behind his head, and – bam! – out popped humongous biceps, like mountains on the horizon of his humeri.

Jackman has always been a mixed bag. Nasty enough for action flicks ( Swordfish .

“The idea of doing Broadway in sequins for a year didn’t seem smart,” Jackman says. “But I’d been offered the part years earlier and strategized my way out of it. When I saw how terrific it was, it made me sick to the stomach that I’d let it go. I wasn’t going to let that happen again.” He won a Tony for it, and a three-year gig hosting the Tony Awards. And he no longer strategizes.

“My agent does, a bit,” Jackman says, “but only as far as ‘I think you’ve got the talent to be an actor when you’re 85, and I want to protect that.’ It’s long-term, which I like.”

The strategy behind his Toronto show is simple. For about eight years, Jackman had been noodling the idea of a stage show he could do in short stints, to keep busy between films. Last summer, he booked a theatre in San Francisco and spent two months putting together a two-week run: “It was that theory of, if I have the date, I know I’ll do it. Sort of like scheduling your housewarming party for a week after you move in. I remember they said, ‘You can have the theatre in advance, because we know you don’t have the lighting yet.’ ” He laughs. “Lighting? We didn’t have a show!