Even when he’s sporting his mutton chops, Jackman doesn’t do away with his acting chops. He is the reigning champ when it comes to playing a superhero the highest number of times—a role he has revisited five more times since his debut in X-Men in 2000. At this point it’s nearly impossible to imagine the character of Wolverine being played by anyone else. Wolverine and Hugh Jackman go hand in hand, so much so that he couldn’t help but sing about it when he hosted the Oscars. He’s to Wolverine what Sean Connery once was (and to many, still is) to James Bond.
Unlike Connery and Bond, Wolverine’s appeal is less in his masculine smoothness than in an intense longing for independence and personal identity as well as order and fairness and honor and justice, in his own way. And so it’s impressive that Hugh Jackman, the musical theater star who seems so personable and pleasant in real life, can make the grouchy, grunting (and often screaming) loner both believable and sympathetic, albeit maybe a little too tall, whatevs. He makes him something of an anti-hero or at least a punk rock, stick-it-to-the-man type of hero, pissed at the hand he’s been dealt but determined to make the most of it. It’s what makes his cameo in X-Men: First Class so perfect: he’d rather be sitting alone in a bar with his glass and cigar. But at the same time Jackman’s demeanor never truly allows you to doubt that when he’s really needed, he’ll be there.
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