HUGH JACKMAN / THE INSPIRATION SERIES
The pleasure
of staying
a student.
Rehearsal rooms, generous collaborators,
and curiosity beyond the spotlight.
By Rob Urban
The part of Hugh Jackman’s career that most interests me is what happens before the apparent ease.
A performer arrives with a familiar face and a considerable history. The next role still has its own requirements. A movement has to be learned. A voice has to be kept ready. Another actor has something to teach him.
There is a particular pleasure in seeing a star remain available to that process. Expertise can make a person more curious about other people’s expertise.
Jackman’s interviews offer an engaging view of that curiosity. They contain teachers, collaborators, rehearsal rooms and a willingness to say where the work is difficult. His public presence becomes more interesting when those people and places come into focus.
01 / IN GOOD COMPANY
There is always
more to learn.
In Juan A. Ramírez’s 2022 interview, republished by The Irish Times, Jackman speaks with admiration about performing alongside Sutton Foster in The Music Man. Her ability challenged him to bring more to the rehearsal room.
Ramírez also describes sharing a Columbia film history course with Jackman in 2020. Taught by Annette Insdorf, the course continued online after in-person classes stopped.
These are appealingly ordinary settings for an extraordinary career. A class has things to watch and discuss. A rehearsal has steps to learn. Achievement does not exhaust either activity.
Jackman also talks about protecting the joy of the young performers in the musical. That concern gives the preparation a social dimension: a demanding production can still be a place where someone feels supported.
I admire the picture that emerges. Curiosity about the work and care for the people making it can occupy the same room.
02 / THE PRACTICE
A left hook.
A daily song.
A 2011 TheaterMania interview captures Jackman between very different assignments. He discusses boxing instruction from Sugar Ray Leonard for Real Steel, his return to Broadway, and auditioning for Jean Valjean in Les Misérables.
He recalls Leonard’s insistence on the quality of his left hook. He also describes singing daily and continuing lessons.
That left hook is a useful detail to hold beside the voice. Each belongs to a body that must learn something specific. A reputation cannot make the movement convincing by itself.
There is pleasure in this kind of exactness. The work becomes a series of things someone can attend to: the shape of a gesture, the condition of a voice, the demands of a particular scene.
His range feels more substantial when understood through those particulars. Different roles ask for different kinds of listening, and different people know how to help.
03 / THE ENCOUNTER
The person
behind the cup.
The story behind Laughing Man Coffee begins with another person’s knowledge.
The company’s account describes Jackman’s 2009 visit to Ethiopia with World Vision Australia. He met coffee farmer Dukale, worked with him on the farm, and spent time with his family and community.
The company traces its beginning to Jackman’s wish to help bring that coffee and the stories of its producers to a wider audience.
Keeping Dukale’s name in the account matters. Coffee reaches us as a familiar daily pleasure, often with very little sense of the people whose work made it possible.
A named person changes the way that distance feels. There is a farm, a family and a body of knowledge at the other end of the cup.
I appreciate a story that encourages us to become more interested in those lives and abilities.
04 / THE PARTNERSHIP
A good intention
needs a daily life.
Food Tank’s 2018 interview with Jackman and David Steingard adds the practical work of building the company, which began in 2011.
Jackman describes wanting to help farmers reach markets. Steingard discusses the challenge of finding staff and developing a culture that would make the café a welcome part of someone’s day.
That second detail makes the business feel tangible. A generous intention has to become an experience delivered by people, repeatedly, in an actual place.
Steingard also speaks about coffee as a family and community enterprise. The interests around a harvest extend beyond the person whose name appears in its story.
I find the partnership worth understanding on those terms. It involves the patient work of connecting a product, a place and a purpose, while recognizing the people who carry each part.
05 / THE COMMUNITY
A life around
the work.
The Laughing Man Foundation describes its work as including support for women’s coffee farming cooperatives in Peru, housing projects in Colombia, business training and educational opportunities for farming families.
These are the foundation’s own descriptions of its programs, and they offer a more useful sense of its focus than a general claim about doing good.
A home, a course of study and a business skill each touch a different part of a person’s life. Together they suggest an interest in the circumstances around the work, as well as the work itself.
That breadth is meaningful. The person growing coffee also has a household, responsibilities and hopes for the people close to them.
Giving those dimensions attention makes the connection between a familiar product and an unfamiliar community more human.
Jackman’s career offers plenty to admire at the scale of a marquee. I am especially drawn to the smaller scale beneath it.
A teacher explains. A colleague raises the level of a rehearsal. A farmer’s story opens an unfamiliar world. A partner works out how an intention will function in daily life.
These encounters make achievement feel populated. They remind me how much possibility there is in being interested in what another person knows.
That is the quality I value here: a readiness to engage, to practice, and to let an encounter lead somewhere. It gives the work a warmth that lasts beyond the entrance and the applause.
Sources: interviews published by The Irish Times, TheaterMania and Food Tank; Laughing Man Coffee’s origin account; and the Laughing Man Foundation’s description of its programs. Linked throughout. Program descriptions are attributed to the organization. Interpretation by Rob Urban.