REAL STEEL directed by Shawn Levy, written by John Gatins based on a story by Richard Matheson, with Hugh Jackman, Dakota Goyo, Evangeline Lilly and Kevin Durand. A DreamWorks release. 127 minutes. Opens Friday (October 7). For venues and times, see Movies.
Having met Hugh Jackman, i’m convinced he can do pretty much anything.
He’s made movies he’s headlined on Broadway he’s hosted the freaking Oscars. He charmed Torontonians earlier this year when he brought his solo show, Hugh Jackman In Concert, to the Princess of Wales.
This week he’s back on the screen in Shawn Levy’s Real Steel, a father-son story set in a near-future America where robots have supplanted humans in the boxing ring. As a two-bit promoter who bonds with his estranged son over the restoration of a battle-bot, Jackman spends a lot of time interacting with CG robots that were added in post-production – and doing it in a totally convincing way. His physical confidence does more to sell the movie’s sci-fi trappings than the effects themselves.
“Theatre training,” he says, dropping into a chair in our interview suite. “Oh, my god… we would have classes on temperature: heat, cold. ‘Make me believe.’ I mean, if you think about it, 80 per cent of the time you’re on stage [you’re] just looking at black. It’s the original green-screen.”
He’s being modest. There’s a quality in Jackman’s performance – and in his young co-star Dakota Goyo’s – that lets us believe what we’re seeing is real. He knows what I mean we care about the robots because his character does.
“Our heroes in the movie are robots,” he says. “We constantly keep saying, ‘They’re just metal and wires, okay? You know you’re talking to a robot.’ We’re constantly reinforcing that and yet we’re asking the audience to invest in them, believe in them and cheer for them – and believe in the underdog. And that’s totally down to our ability to believe in them as well, as actors.”
The job came with a couple of perks, like having Sugar Ray Leonard come in as Jackman’s boxing coach for a key shadow-boxing sequence.
“We really worked hard on that,” Jackman says. “The lucky thing for me was that all the fights were actually choreographed [and] converted into robots before we shot a frame of film. So I could study that fight I worked on that every day for three or four months to make sure we got it. And then Sugar Ray Leonard came on to make sure I looked like a boxer, which was unbelievable.”
Jackman’s filmography speaks to his versatility. In an era when studios are all too happy to typecast an actor – especially one who broke out the way he did in the first X-Men movie – he’s refused to go the action hero route. Sure, he’s played Wolverine in five pictures – and a sixth is on the way with James Mangold, who made Jackman’s period romantic comedy Kate & Leopold – but he’s also worked with directors like Christopher Nolan, Darren Aronofsky and Baz Luhrmann on films as diverse as The Prestige, The Fountain and Australia. How does he keep changing things up?
“Fear of unemployment,” he says. “I’m not actually joking about that. I was 26 when I graduated from drama school, and I’d probably worked 15 different jobs. Mainly at small businesses – restaurants, gas stations. And the ones that worked were people who put 24/7 into their business for about five years. After five years, once you’ve established your business, a lot of your work is done for you you’ve just got to maintain it. So that was my goal with myself. I said, ‘For five years I’m not going to wait for one phone call. Every day I’m going to do something I’m going to go out there and to make a living at it. If after five years I’m not making a living, I’m out.’ So I kind of put that on myself, and continue to put that on myself as a reminder. I always had that feeling: ‘I’m gonna work harder than everyone else.'”
Interview Clips
Hugh Jackman on working with his young co-star David Goyo:
Jackman on the Spielbergian aspect of Real Steel:
Jackman on what he’ll do for a role, and the actors he admires:
Jackman on how delays on the next Wolverine movie led him to do a one-man show:
normw@nowtoronto.com
