Hugh Jackman says he damaged his vocal chords because of his Wolverine role
Topics: Hugh Jackman, Celebrity, Film and TV
Katherine Sidnell
Featured Image Credit: MediaPunch Inc/Photo 12/Alamy Stock Photo
Topics: Hugh Jackman, Celebrity, Film and TV
He may have played a Wolverine with superhuman strength, but sadly Hugh Jackman isn’t quite as undamageable in real life.
The X-Men actor has said during a recent interview that playing the iconic Marvel character damaged his vocal cords permanently.
Jackman even joked that his drama school teacher would be ‘horrified’ by some of the things he did for the character and his falsetto wasn’t as ‘strong’.
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Chatting on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, he also talked about the role that made him famous and how he’s bulking up as he returns to the character in Deadpool 3.
“My teacher at drama school would have been horrified by some of the things I did in Wolverine,” he joked, adding that he’d strained him vocal cords after taking on the character in 2000s: “I’ve done some damage to my voice, through playing Wolverine.”
Despite this, the 54-year-old would later go on to appear in multiple musicals on Broadway, which won a Tony award in 2004.
Jackman even appeared in two film adaptations of musicals, first in Les Mis (2012) alongside Anne Hathaway and then in The Greatest Showman (2017).
However, the Aussie actor couldn't deny that playing the mutant had done more damage than the multiple musicals he’s appeared in over the years.
“My falsetto is not as strong as it used to be, and I put that down directly to some of the growling and yelling I did,” he told listeners.
The role is so physically demanding that people had accused the actor of using steroids in order to bulk up his physique for the X-Men character, but he’s firmly denied this.
Instead, Jackman prefers what he calls the ‘old fashioned way’, and spoke about his rigorous training regime on HBO's Who's Talking to Chris Wallace.
“No, I love my job. And I love Wolverine,” he told the host, but adding that he refused steroids after hearing what it did to other actors in the industry.
Although he never named the person, he did reveal that one actor even talked to him about the side effects: “I got to be careful what I say here, but I had been told anecdotally what the side effects are of that.
"And I was like, 'I don't love it that much'. So no, I just did it the old-school way.”
The Van Helsing actor opted for a high protein diet instead, joking that he had to apologise to the world’s vegans because of how much chicken he’d eaten for the role of the wolf man.
“I’ve eaten more chickens - I'm so sorry to all the vegans and vegetarians and to the chickens of the world... Literally the karma is not good for me. If the deity has anything related to chickens, I'm in trouble," Jackman laughed.
We forgive you Hugh!