Dances with 'Wolverine': Hugh Jackman on stepping back into his mutant role

LOS ANGELES - Meet the darker, edgier, angrier Wolverine.

In "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," the mutant superhero is nastier and less sensitive than he was in the first three "X-Men" films - and that was exactly how Hugh Jackman wanted it when he signed on to star in and produce the much-anticipated prequel.

"It's fair to say that by 'X-Men 3' the fans thought [Wolverine] had gone a little soft, and I kind of agree with them," said the Australia-born actor, who was a little-known stage and TV actor when he was cast as Wolverine in the original 2000 film.

"This [film] was very personal to me," he said of the latest "X-Men" entry, which opens today. "The main reason I wanted to become a producer was to protect the character of Wolverine and tone of movie, and make sure we did as much justice as we could to his origins."

The film begins several decades before the first "X-Men" movie and explores the intense rivalry between Wolverine and his brother Victor Creed (Liev Schreiber), a fellow mutant known as Sabretooth.

"What I love about Wolverine is his uncompromising approach to life - he's the anti-hero," Jackman said. "I wanted the film to feel different, the aesthetic of it, the tone . . . a little rawer, maybe a little more human. That's what has appealed to me about the comic book."

"X-Men Origins: Wolverine" is set in the 1970s and traces the backstory of the steel-clawed superhero, from his childhood to an idyllic existence in the Canadian Rockies, and finally to fighting for his life on Three Mile Island, an abandoned nuclear plant site that has been turned into a containment center for mutants. (Though the filmmakers shot footage of the real Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Australia's Cockatoo Island, a former shipyard, ended up subbing for the real site in the film.)

Despite the enormous popularity of the X-Men franchise (altogether, the films have made $1.2 billion), Jackman said he's nervous about reactions to the latest film. In an interview with the Daily News a few days ahead of the opening, he said that he planned to sneak into a late-night multiplex showing ("probably Thursday midnight"), baseball cap pulled low, to see how audiences were responding to the film.

"I'll want to know what the fans think, see if they dig it," he said.

In producing his first major feature, Jackman took a hands-on approach from the beginning. He was heavily involved in everything from casting many parts (among them Ryan Reynolds, Dominic Monaghan, and Black Eyed Peas front man Will.i.Am as fellow mutants) to hiring Gavin Hood, a South African director best known for the independent feature "Tsotsi." On one especially tough night, Jackman even found himself begging the cast and crew to tack a few more hours on to a 15-hour workday to save $175,000.

"I knew how tired everyone was," he recalled. "It was already 2 in the morning. Because I like having camaraderie with [the cast and crew], I didn't want to abuse that, but I did make the speech, and we did work on."

Famous for his nice-guy personality, Jackman remained as upbeat and polite as ever during a recent day of nonstop publicity for the movie. He was apologetic about the fact that he didn't know what Three Mile Island was when it first came up as a setting in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." ("I felt very ignorant, because I remember we were discussing it and I had no idea about it," he said.) And during a press conference with the cast, he made a point of singling out and thanking the film's sole female lead, Lynn Collins, whom he cast after watching her act in "Merchant of Venice," with Al Pacino.

"Lynn fills a role that was so vital to the movie," he said. "Anyone who knows acting and knows film structure, you'll know that what Lynn had to pull off in the film was probably one of the most difficult things to do. She did an amazing job."

For his part, Jackman, an accomplished singer and dancer who hosted the Oscars this year, said that playing Wolverine was a snap compared to his year on stage as Peter Allen in "The Boy from Oz."

"It's a marathon," he said of his Broadway turn, which required him to perform 20 songs a night.

Playing Wolverine "was hard, too, but in a different way. I do like that feeling of knowing I've traveled somewhere and been somewhere and sacrificed a little for something, a little bit of that Protestant work ethic in me," he said with a chuckle. "But if I had to compare the two, the hardest thing I've ever had to do was that year on Broadway."

So does that mean he's game for another actor-producer turn on the next Wolverine film?

"We're talking to writers at the moment," he said. "There's a particular story in the comic book that's set in Japan, which is amazing. That's exciting to me, but we'll have to see." *