Australian actor Hugh Jackman is a megastar, and he’s got two historical roles coming up: Robin Hood in The Death of Robin Hood, and Paul in Apostle Paul. So it seemed like a good time to look back at his several historical roles. Let’s do this!
Duncan Jones in Snowy River: The McGregor Saga (1994-96)
An Australian TV show about a 19th-century Australian cattle ranching family.
Curly in Oklahoma! (1999)
A TV movie version of the Rogers & Hammerstein musical.
Leopold in Kate & Leopold (2001)
A romcom in which a man from 1879 time travels to modern day New York to fall in love with Meg Ryan.
Van Helsing in Van Helsing (2004)
A feature film about the vampire hunter from the Dracula stories.
Tomas/Tommy/Tom Creo in The Fountain (2006)
A modern-day scientist tries to find a cure for his cancer-striken wife, with plotlines in the future and the past, specifically as with Isabella of Castile.
Robert Angier in The Prestige (2006)
Dueling magicians in the late 19th century.
Drover in Australia (2008)/Faraway Downs (2023)
A 1930s-style melodrama feature film set in the Australian outback, which was rereleased as a miniseries with extended footage in 2023.
Jean Valjean in Les Misérables (2012)
A big budget feature film adaptation of the 1830s-set musical.
Blackbeard in Pan (2015)
A fantasy film that’s a prequel to the Peter Pan story.
P.T. Barnum in The Greatest Showman (2017)
A fictionalized musical biopic about showman/entertainer P.T. Barnum.
Which is your favorite of Hugh Jackman’s historical roles?
Pan is my Roman Empire because it feels like such a knockoff of SyFy’s Neverland, which was released four years earlier (and with a way better cast, including Rhys Ifans, Anna Friel, Bob Hoskins (reprising the part of Smee from Hook), and Charles Dance – as well as casting an actual Indigenous actress – Q’Orianka Kilcher – as the Tiger Lily-type character); only Pan is louder, far less serious in tone and has inexplicable musical numbers (why do the pirates sing a Nirvana song that was released over 80 years after Peter Pan debuted as a play? I’unno).
I’m not sure if it excuses the gold lace or not, but in Kate and Leopold he wasn’t American. He was an English duke who was visiting the U.S. when he came forward in time.
As Sarah noted above, the Leopold jacket is meant for a British duke. I don’t know about the lace either, in that I would think it should be embroidered or some sort of elaborately arranged braid. What would Victoria’s sons have worn aside from the standard penguin get up? On the other hand it is a fantasy. I did like the costumes in Australia. Hated Greatest Showman so don’t have much to say about that one. Van Helsing was bonkers in reimagining the character as a Vatican monster assassin. The steampunk was kind of cool, but the costume party (and Kate Beckinsale’s red gown) was gorgeous. Good intentions (the first five minutes looked like a genuine 1930s Universal monster movie) that seriously misfired. Hugh can be a really good actor with the right material, but he’s made some weird choices. The less said about his nasal singing voice, the better.
I seem to be one of the few persons on this internet that have an honest-to-God soft spot for VAN HELSING (I once recommended the film to the UNSHAVED MOUSE as suitable Halloween fodder for his blog and I don’t believe the poor murid has forgiven me yet).
I can imagine a better version of the film (Possibly with Mr Arnold Schwarzenegger in passing-the-torch mode), but I honestly enjoy the film we got, if only for being so delightfully OTT Gothic-Monster-Mash-meets-James Bond.
Not really pertinent to the costume discussion, but he’s supposed to be one of the most delightful actors to work with in the business.
Minus the whole cheating on his wife with his married costar thing. Or being friends with the Kushners.
Voodoo!
I’m crushed :-(
I admit, I fell in love with him after seeing him in Kate & Leopold, though I had already seen him in some Aussie TV stuff before. He plays an English duke in K & L, but that costume in the ball scene is ridiculous, IIRC, he also wore boots with it! I still love him in some of his roles, but I equally do not understand a lot of his movie choices. I went to see his live show and he was fantstic in it, no question he is a great performer!
“Greatest Showman” is a mess, but oh the “Rewrite the Stars” duet, with the lovely Zendaya wearing a re-imagining of the circus girl outfits from Renoir’s painting of Cirque Fernando performers, and doing some very nice flyer work as well. It’s like the sorbet in the cardboard.
Everything until 2024 (start of strange movie choices). Kate and Leopold is one of my guilty pleasures that I watch when I’m down and out. Which reminds me…….
Uh… In Act II of “Oklahoma”, they find out they are to become a state. You can date it practically to the day… on June 16th, 1906 Congress says they may create a state constitution.
November 16, 1907, they become a state… but that’s after the events of the show.
“1870? 1880?” Are you kidding???? Geez! C’mon girls!
The reason I know this so obnoxiously accurately is because in college my friend costumed a production of “Oklahoma” and the director asked him “What period shall we do it in? Civil War?” 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
I should confess here that I’m not a lover of musicals. But “Oklahoma” is one of the few I like. I hate the song “Oklahoma” but the rest of the music is fantastic! And it’s one of the 1st musicals to not be a “backstage musical”. It’s the 1st musical to have a big fantasy ballet, choreographed by the great Agnes DeMille.
Thank you for finally covering Hugh Jackman in the Man Candy section. We share a birthdate [but not a year] and I admit from the first time I saw his picture, I was smitten. Seems silly to say for a woman a few years into AARP membership but the loins know what they want, I suppose. No famous person is flawless [his divorce and his questionable friends] but considering what’s out there, his are few and there are more good things about him than bad. I don’t really care that some of his costumes are inaccurate. I just go feral. “Me see pretty, me want pretty.”