For 11 or 12 months, he trained to ride in the manner of a real stockman. He knew from the start he couldn't play the Drover and make extensive use of a riding or stunt double, "because the Drover is defined by what he does and the landscape he's in."
The process Jackman used to find just who the Drover was is the same he's employed for characters throughout his career: a marriage of the "outside-in" school of Olivier and the "inside-out" school of Marlon Brando.
"Australia has uniquely benefited from English tradition and has also been incredibly influenced by American style and culture," he says. Jackman thinks the freedom to pick and choose among a cultural "smorgasbord" has allowed him to develop his own attitude and methods. "You try to find the triggers you need to inhabit a character, and then, when you're confident you've found the triggers to change into that other character, you don't have the burden to live a part. And if that weren't the case, you'd very quickly get divorced - although my wife likes to say that because she married an actor, she gets to have an affair with a new man every three months."
He says the process he uses for Wolverine isn't any different. "When you have the power to do fantastical things, you have to be even more rooted to reality and to the complexity of the character. The beauty of Wolverine is that what he takes with him from his life's extreme experiences is already laid out in the comic books, which are not nearly as two-dimensional as some of them are." As a producer on X-Men Origins: Wolverine (due to open here May 1), he had the chance to hire socially conscious South African director Gavin Hood (Tsotsi, Renditi on), who has spoken about the series in terms of the character's existential angst (what really distinguishes a mutant from a human? Just three steel talons on each hand?), while convincing Jackman he understood the contours of "an epic journey." (David Benioff, who wrote Troy, did the script.)
But Jackman thinks none of that counts unless audiences enjoy themselves - which happens partly because they sense the actors are enjoying themselves. He recently heard Ed Harris talk about how much he loved Paul Newman, because whatever part he inhabited, "he conveyed the confidence that he knew what he was doing, and you saw from the sparkle in his eyes that he was having fun. When I play Wolverine, I want you to relate to his emotions and his pain, but I also want you to have the sense that the fellow playing Wolverine is having fun with it."
online Watch a preview and see more photos from Australia at baltimoresun.com/movies
