Hugh Jackman and the Art of Acting

[jo]

[jo]

A lot numerated Paul Newman ( but he was only good in film acting), Denzel ( not handsome, but personable), Robert Redford ( pretty boy, with some well-liked movies)...and I did see Hugh's name come up before the tweet calling him the ultimate triple threat.

Jo

[jo]

[jo]

How fast can you name the movie in each square

[jo]

[njr]

Oct 15, 2021 10:38:36 GMT -5 jo said:

Did anybody tell this guy Hugh turned 53, not 52? (nope, so I did)

[jo]

In new book The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe via ScreenRant, Feige reveals what he learned from the hiring and subsequent backlash that first greeted the news of Jackman’s Wolverine.


“Who cares that he’s so tall? He embodies the spirit of Wolverine, and that was a big lesson that I always took from that. It doesn’t have to match the comic frame exactly. It has to match the spirit of it.”

Hugh has used the same yardstick when seeking roles that are either biopics or came from a prior existence. And he has had tremendous success with them --

*Les Miserables - in Victor Hugo's book, Valjean came fom peasant stock and was a tree-cutter before being convicted... and was homely. In the film adaptation, Hugh embodied the heroism and determination of Valjean. He embodied the three stages of life of Valjean : the convict whose spirit did not flounder...the town mayor who raised Cosette... and the revolutionary known for compassion & mercy.

*The Greatest Showman - Hugh looked very much unlike the real-life Barnum. But he embodied the impresario's imagination & determination to create the world of mass entertainment, now known as showbiz.

*Bad Education - Hugh looked nothing like Frank Tassone. We do not know how charming Tassone was to have been able to rise to his stature as a great educator, but Hugh was able to embody the charm & positivity that made his constituent community ( the student body, the school board and the community) believe in his capabilities and ambition.

*The Boy From Oz - Hugh did not look like Peter Allen at all. But he embodied his free spirit and daring qualities to engage his audiences in the most entertaining way.

*Logan - he was so different from the comic book of OLD MAN LOGAN, yet the way he captured the spirit of the aging Wolverine has made the superhero fandom heady with his portrayal.

*Now The Music Man - again, will we see a performance that sets him apart from Robert Preston's iconic portrayal but remain true to the spirit that Meredith Willson intended when he created the character? Will he both rogue and dashing? Will his romantic portrayal be more complex as Jerry Zaks seem to indicate?


What is interesting though --

Lisa Joy was supposed to have had Hugh Jackman as inspiration for the character of Nick Bannister in REMINISCENCE? Or was she simply banking on Hugh Jackman's ability and versatility to tackle so many roles of different characteristics and appeal?


Jo

[jo]

I saw this tweet which gives a perfect description of Hugh Jackman --

Jeffrey
@mojochefjeff
Replying to
@abhorrently_urs
He was not far removed from Bill and Ted, and all I could hear when he spoke was "Ted" Theodore Logan. I would've picked a young Hugh Jackman. He brings style, charisma and intensity.

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

Don't really know where to classify this

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

Joining the themes of the passage from dark to light ... would be The Fountain.

Not as unequivocal would be his portrayal of the Barnum end-of-line redemption in The Greatest Showman.



On the other hand, Hugh seems to have also done other portrayals that show the opposite direction in his acting journeys --

this time, from light to dark ;


*The Prestige
*Bad Education
*Prisoners

It seems that Hugh Jackman's best acting portrayals would reside in these 2 opposite thematic journeys.

He was also good in Australia and Reminiscence - but they did not draw the same level of interest.


Where will THE SON lie ?

Jo

[jo]

In the course of his acting career, Hugh never seemed to mind how his male model-looks were changed not always to enhance them but to bring on a more realistic look to the character he portrayed.

No vanity as to how he looked!

Jo

[jo]

[jo]

Javier may be partly joking ... but he is actually saying that now actors are spreading their wings to musicals
or some film singing. All thanks to Hugh Jackman for showing the way! Lol - nobody laughs at Les Miserables/Greatest Showman...and even The Music Man on Broadway




Jo

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

[jo]

May 15, 2022 20:09:17 GMT -5 jo said:

From the NYTimes --

OPINION
PAMELA PAUL

Let Actors Act

May 15, 2022
Adrian Lester, right, with Simon Russell Beale, center, and Adam Godley in “The Lehman Trilogy.”


387 (Replies)

By Pamela Paul

Opinion Columnist

Adrian Lester, a British actor from Birmingham and the son of two immigrants from Jamaica, was nominated last week for a Tony Award for his performance in “The Lehman Trilogy” as Emanuel Lehman, one of the German-born Jewish founders of the fallen investment behemoth Lehman Brothers. Lester, like the other actors in the three-man play, takes on several parts, including female characters and at one point, a thumb-sucking toddler.

There has been no outcry about a British actor of African descent playing a German Jew, nor was there any fuss when he played Bobby, a character traditionally performed by white actors, in a London production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Company,” for which he won an Olivier.

And why should there have been? It’s called acting.

There was no protest either about Lester’s co-star Simon Russell Beale, born to British parents in what was then British Malaya and a former chorister at St. Paul’s Cathedral, playing a German Jew. Adam Godley, the third actor in the play, is Jewish in real life, but he’s also gay — not so in the play. Again, it’s called acting, and Beale and Godley were also nominated for Tony Awards last week.

And yet countless actors have been criticized for playing people they do not resemble in real life.




Earlier this year, Helen Mirren was lambasted for portraying Golda Meir, a former prime minister of Israel, in a forthcoming biopic even though she’s not Jewish — engaging in what is now called “Jewface.” In a recent interview defending Mirren, Ian McKellen (who incidentally has played everything from a wizard to a cat) asked, “Is the argument that a straight man cannot play a gay part, and if so, does that mean I can’t play straight parts?” He went on: “Surely not. We’re acting. We’re pretending.”


Daring to take on parts different from oneself didn’t always kick up a storm. Back in 1993 when Tom Hanks played a gay character in “Philadelphia,” he was hailed as brave for taking on homophobia and won an Oscar. Today, his performance no longer plays so well in some quarters. “Straight men playing gay — everyone wants to give them an award,” the performer Billy Porter complained in a 2019 actor’s round table. Yet many of our best gay, lesbian and bisexual actors — Jodie Foster, Alan Cumming, Kristen Stewart, Nathan Lane — have won awards for straight roles without even a murmur of complaint.

What we are effectively saying here — without ever, heaven forbid, saying it out loud — is that it’s OK for actors from groups considered to be marginalized — whether gay, Indigenous, Latino or any other number of identities — to play straight white characters. But it’s not OK for the reverse.

Such double standards may not trouble you. But if it’s a problem that a “miscast” actor — one who differs in identity from the character — takes a role away from a “properly cast” actor when there are already fewer roles for underrepresented or marginalized groups, then why not condemn Simon Russell Beale for taking a job from a Jewish actor? Why no outcry every time a 40-something actress bends biology to play the mothers of 25-year-old actresses, robbing older actresses who more plausibly fit the part?

If, however, the real problem is actors not being able to understand what it feels like to be part of a demographic group or to have a sexual orientation outside the confines of their own experience, then none of these actors should be able to play anyone unlike themselves. In other words, no one should ever be allowed to play a part.

Hollywood has wisely moved on from the offensive extremes of blackface and Shylock stereotypes, “queeny” stock gay characters and Mickey Rooney’s embarrassing turn as a Japanese landlord in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” There is plenty of room in the middle without ricocheting to the other undesirable extreme.




It’s not that strict typecasting should never happen; it can yield rewarding opportunities for both actors and audiences. Behold the deaf performers in the Oscar-winning “Coda.”

But deaf performers can also act movingly in a musical like the 2015 Deaf West revival of “Spring Awakening,” which featured them in roles that were originally performed as hearing characters and performed simply as characters, neither explicitly hearing nor deaf, but transcendently human in their expression.

Likewise, in a recent revival of “Oklahoma!” Ali Stroker, who uses a wheelchair, was able to fully embody Ado Annie, who spends much of her time in the movie and previous stage versions swishing away from her suitor, Will Parker, just as Daniel Day-Lewis once captured, with extraordinary sensitivity in “My Left Foot,” the wheelchair-bound writer and painter Christy Brown.

Good actors are able to find a way to portray people who are not like themselves, whether on the surface or well below, which is what differentiates them from those of us who could barely remember our lines in a fourth-grade production of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Acting is a feat of compassion and an act of generosity. Those capable of that kind of emotional ventriloquy enable audiences to find ourselves in the lives portrayed onscreen, no matter how little they may resemble our own.

Bravo to those actors who do that well. Bravo to the talented Adrian Lester, who makes you forget the color of his skin, his nationality and his religion — and gives himself over entirely to his performance. There is no reason for any actor to apologize for exercising and reveling in his craft.

The 387 Replies were basically in agreement with the sentiments and observations in the above article ( too long to reprint here, sorry).

Can you imagine if Hugh Jackman decided that his career should only focus on the stereotype Aussie and only act in films or theatre primarily suited to the Australian public?

He is one actor who has transcended any typecasting --

*he can play a gruff superhero (most popular role!)
*he can sing and dance like any Broadway musical hero...or movie musical hero
*he can play gay (entertainer or school administrator)
*he can play baddie (pirate, con-man in Deception, or enemy of robots)
*he can play 18th century romantic duke
*he can play rogue cop (Steady Rain)
*he can play a public figure who was disgraced
*he can play an obssessed magician
*he can play a man who wants the fountain of youth
*He can play a man obssessed with something or someone not very defined ( if you understood The River)
*He can play coach with a past to a struggling budding Olympian
*He can play a crass Dad who discovered his son
*He can voice a posh rat, an Easter bunny, an explorer looking for BigFoot(Susan, ahem), a singing penguin.

*He can play Jean Valjean or Gaston or Joe Gillis or Curly or Harold Hill

*He can also play Australian

PS: He has not played a Shakespeare character ( although trained in classical theatre as well)





Jo