For many of us, Hugh Jackman has been the embodiment of Wolverine. He’s played the live-action role for nearly 20 years. In a new interview with Variety, Hugh Jackman opened up about saying goodbye to Wolverine.
Currently, the Logan star is making his rounds for his latest project, The Greatest Showman. The movie sees the Aussie actor play the role of P.T. Barnum. During the interview, he talked about the bittersweet feeling of bidding the character of Wolverine goodbye and how he portrayed Wolverine in Logan.
I wish I’d started playing him like that 17 years ago. So there’s some sense of missed opportunity, but when I saw ‘Logan,’ I sat there and I did have tears in my eyes. The main feeling I had was: ‘There, that’s the character. I feel like I’ve done it now.’ And I was calm and at peace, but I’m going to miss that guy.
With rumors flying around of 20th Century Fox being bought out next week, there might be some hope of a possible return for Jackman. He hinted at a return to the character if Wolverine was incorporated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Personally, I wouldn’t be opposed to him coming back, but that doesn’t look likely even if Disney ends up buying out Fox. Jackman seems at peace and interested in other projects outside of Wolverine.
In fact, in the same interview Jackman revealed he turned down a chance to play James Bond because he worried he wouldn’t get to work on anything else if he was both James Bond and Wolverine.
I was about to do ‘X-Men 2’ and a call came from my agent asking if I’d be interested in Bond. I just felt at the time that the scripts had become so unbelievable and crazy, and I felt like they needed to become grittier and real. And the response was: ‘Oh, you don’t get a say. You just have to sign on.’ I was also worried that between Bond and ‘X-Men,’ I’d never have time to do different things.
He also talked about how he felt he was getting pigeon-holed into being an action hero:
I always tried to do different things. But there was a time between ‘X-Men 3’ and the first Wolverine movie when I could see the roles getting smaller. People wanted me to play that kind of hero part exclusively. It felt a little bit claustrophobic.
While it seems unlikely Jackman will pick up Wolverine’s claws again, I would love to see him rip up the bad guys again.
What do you think? Are you holding out any hope that Hugh Jackman will return to the role of Wolverine? Or is the issue settled? Let us know in the comments below!