No matter how many times one gets to interview Hugh Jackman, it would be impossible to get tired of it. First of all, one can’t help but be charmed by Hugh’s personal attention. Though he’s undoubtedly been asked the same question day after day on the requisite press rounds for his latest film “The Fountain”, he responds by looking the inquisitor in the eyes and contemplating a response, as if it’s the first time.
His projects, of which there were six in 2006, have been diverse, ranging from big action (X-Men: The Last Stand), to intellectual comedy (Scoop), to animated voice acting (Flushed Away). Each of Jackman’s public appearances, however, has been consistent with his contagious enthusiasm and kindly, appreciative manner.
For his last go-round of the year, Jackman holed up in Beverly Hills’ Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Unfased by the hours of on-camera work and tape recorders in his face, Jackman still energizes a room.
His latest film is easily his most demanding. The Fountain is director Darren Aronofsky’s romantic sci-fi epic about eternal youth. Jackman plays characters in three time periods: Spanish conquistador Tomas, present-day cancer researcher Tommy and zen space traveler Tom in the future. Through the film the audience finds out how the versions of the character are connected in their love for a dying woman, and obsession with beating death itself.
“Listen, I had never felt up until this movie that I had had a script that warranted that [emotion],” Jackman told Dish. “Yes, it’s a little frightening. It should be a little frightening for every actor, I think. Otherwise it’s not challenging. But I knew it was a kind of rawness that he wanted, that would be difficult to get to. At the same time, I felt like some of the challenges I’ve had even at drama school, like doing plays, were bigger than the movies that I’ve been getting. So I was waiting to get a role of this emotional intensity. In between, there were like six, seven years where nothing had really demanded that. At the same time, you can’t just go, ‘I’ve got to do a role where I’m really emotionally pushed.’ That’s not a reason to do it. So finally I felt like I had a script that really had a lot of potential.”
The film suffered a tumultuous history as well. Aronofsky intended to make the film with Brad Pitt, whose fans still remember his natural conquistador beard. When that fell through, Aronofsky tried to move on, but couldn’t. He met Jackman backstage at a performance of The Boy from Oz on Broadway, where the final incarnation of the film began to come together.
“He came back and I said, ‘I heard about The Fountain and I’d really love to read it,’” recalled Jackman. “And he went, ‘Mm, no. No’, he said, ‘I don’t think so.’ I went ‘Oh, I think I’ve overstepped a mark here. I probably shouldn’t have asked him.’ But he rang me the next day and said, ‘Were you serious about that or were you just saying that like actors say to directors?’ I said I was serious. He said, ‘Okay, well, I’ll let you read it.’ So I read it that night and I was so moved by it. I thought it was so beautiful. I said, ‘I’m in. If you can wait ‘til September when my contract finishes, and you want me to do it, I’m in.’
He continues, ruefully, “Well, it wasn’t that easy. He then came and talked to me, showed me everything and then did sort of a little speech to me, after which any actor would end up saying ‘yes,’ but I’m glad that I really listened to him because he said, ‘I’m going to ask more of you, Hugh, than you’ve ever been asked to do before on film. I’m going to take you places you maybe even thought you would never go on film. Are you ready to do that?’ I said yeah. Actually, for me, I was thrilled, but he absolutely worked me.”
Once onboard, Jackman suggested that Arnofsky cast his real life wife, Rachel Weisz, as his leading lady. It took an actual meeting and viewing the chemistry to convince the director, but Weisz never had any qualms.
“I think who we are in our work lives and who we are in our private lives is very different,” she said. “I met the director and he met the actress and it’s just a really different part of our identities. It definitely exceeded my expectations. It was an amazing collaboration and, as a director, he really pushes his actors, pushes you, pushes you, challenges you and that’s what you want as an actor. You want to be challenged and pushed out to the edge where you’re out of your comfort zone and you’re very raw and vulnerable and exposed and all that sort of actory stuff that we love. So, it was a great experience, really great.”
Actor and director collaborated to make each incarnation, past, present and future, visually different. “There’s an essential similarity in a way, what drives them. But physically, we wanted to make them very different, not only looking. Obviously they look very different but I created a different physicality for all three. For Tommy, I made him like a question mark. We had this image of him as a question mark and Darren and I spent hours in rooms. I’d walk around and around in a room just trying different things until we kind of felt it was right. But Tommy’s very weighed down by the world and what he’s doing. Look at the film. He’s always hunched over, head sort of down like a question mark. His lab is underground. Everything is under, under, under. He’s always going down steps. If you look at the design, it’s brilliantly done.
Then back in the past, Tomas is a conquistador. He’s a warrior. So whilst he’s strong physically, he’s ready to fight. His head is sort of down and he’s very sort of like a racehorse, nothing will stop him, he’s got blinders on. Then there’s Tom, in the future. He hasn’t fully come to terms with who he is. He’s still got some problems. He knows how to be physically at his ultimate, so he does tai chi, he does yoga, he meditates and all these things are about maintaining the physical form. So he was just more at ease.”
Tom is also completely bald. The ladies may cringe at the loss of Jackman’s perfectly coifed locks, but they’re back now. “I’d always wanted to do it because I’d always wanted to swim with a bald head, see what it felt like. Is it weird? But I really have no attachment to my hair at all. I’ve never had the same hair twice. For the last 15 years, I’ve dyed it this color, that, chopped it off. I’ve never been completely bald. I just can’t stop laughing when I see myself. I think I look like a character out of Lord of the Rings. I think I look ridiculous. It is feeling-wise, incredible.
He continues, “To have a shower with a bald head is the best way to wake up. Then I found myself doing this all day long, feeling my head. My son at the time just thought it was completely odd. He didn’t even want to touch me and then gradually, he was like that too. He just wanted to feel it. Oh, it was great. We’d be sitting there watching Elmo or something and he’s doing this [rubbing] to my head the whole time. It was great.”
Weisz shed her glamorous image for the film as well. Izzy is a cancer patient who has already been through chemotherapy, so her hair is barely grown back. “Darren was really clear that whoever played that part that the character had been through chemo and had lost her hair and it was growing back in an uneven way,” she said. “He wanted the actress to not have a wig. Most actresses today have really long hair so he made that very clear. He thought it was an important thing for the transformation of what the character had been through. I thought it was kind of cool. I liked it. It definitely had a starkness to it but I think it told a lot of story without me having to work harder telling that part of the story. We shot the present first and then we shot the past so in the past I had a fabulous Queen’s wig.”
In addition to playing Tomas/Tommy/Tom during three different stages of emotional turmoil, the film was a physical workout for Jackman. In space, his character performs floating tai chi and yoga. Here on earth, they achieved that look by filming him under water.
“I was literally doing yoga every morning for an hour and a half, two hours. But [also] in between every shot. I remember this from drama school, one of the teachers said people hold their emotions in their body. And if you don’t express them, they get locked in your body. Men have very tight hips. A yoga teacher told me this. They have very tight hips which is the lotus position. That’s why it’s so bloody hard for me to do it. They have tight hips because that is where emotion is stored.
He adds, “Women are a lot, generally, more emotional and they’re a lot looser in their hips. So there are certain positions like the pigeon, things like that, that were excruciating but I had to do them. And particularly on those emotional days, I would sit in that position for half an hour at a time.”
True to the nature he presents to the public, Jackman was able to keep things light on such an intense set. “Those three days under water, at the end of it, I dunked [Aronofsky]. We were all wrapped, it was great. I saw him going back from the edge of the pool because he could tell something was going on. And then I got out of the pool and I pretended I had a bad knee. I said, ‘I’ve done my knee doing the lotus position.’ I’m looking over at him and he wasn’t coming forward. He said to the nurse, ‘Go and check out Hugh’ because he knew something was going on. So I said to myself, ‘Oh, God, I’m going to have to really go on with this.’ Literally about 10 or 15 minutes. Finally I laid down and I said, ‘Get the stretcher, get the stretcher.’ So they had to get the stretcher to lift me. At that point, he came and goes ‘sh*t’ because soon as he came over, I picked him up and I ran to the pool. He was really pissed off because he knew I was going to do it.”
Weisz did not pull any pranks on her husband, but she was able to see the light in a story about dying, mourning and obsessing. “For me, what it’s really about is a celebration of life,” she said. “The whole movie, to me, is about when I go to Hugh Jackman and say ‘Will you take a walk with me and see the first snow?’ and he says ‘I’m too busy. Leave me alone.’ On our death bed, it’s that we’re going to regret. It’s going to be the moments that we didn’t spend with our loved ones and we didn’t seize the moment, smell the roses, all those expressions and didn’t live as fully and as presently and as openly and as lovingly with those around us as we could have. So, for me, that’s what the movie really means. I have to kind of remind myself. I don’t know what I think about death and the afterlife, but I do know that life is definitely finite and short and so we have to try and celebrate being alive as much as we can.”
“The Fountain”, a visually and narratively unusual film will not be to everybody’s taste. Already it has earned an infamous reputation. In fact, critics at the Venice Film Festival booed the screening. But Jackman even put a positive spin on that.
“I was surprised. I shouldn’t have been in a way, because it’s a Darren Aronofsky movie. It’s probably always going to polarize. I was surprised that people would be vehemently against it because I’d think even if you didn’t get it or it’s not your cup of tea, there’s such an artistry even on a technical level that I would have thought people would appreciate that. But then again, this is a movie, it’s a love story, it’s a movie about death, life and love. This is going to touch nerves with people and ultimately I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this is actually probably a good thing.’ But the best story that never got printed out of Venice, that infamous screening where certain people booed or they whistled, it actually broke into a fight. There was fisticuffs down in the front between two of the people. For a filmmaker, that’s the holy grail, right? That’s awesome.”
The Fountain opens November 22
