Hugh Jackman Quotes

I think of myself as an actor. The duty of an actor is to be able to impersonate anything - a child, an old man, a tree, a chair, a woman.

Personally, I need to learn every word on the page before I go in and audition. I have not mastered the skill of holding pages in my hand and acting with pages in my hand. I find that every time I have to look at the page it takes me completely out of the scene.

Every audition is different, but I get incredibly nervous and insecure and worked up for however long I have to prep - that's when I get to spin. But you're not allowed to spin once you enter the room. Doubt really can't enter the room when you're auditioning - unless it's part of the character.

In high school, my first thing ever was I played Tony in 'West Side Story' when I was about 17. I was a really shy kid, and I just, like, forced myself to learn how to sing this one month because I loved 'West Side Story' so much, and I somehow managed to get the role.

I was a theater actor back in the U.K., and you knew the whole play, so you could plot your storyline and character. And then I did 'Lost' and didn't know, and it was kind of frustrating, but I enjoyed it.

I'm not a natural-born actor. So it's been a very slow learning curve for me.

I think I'm not a natural performer; I think I'm an actor.

Something I learned as an actor was which scenes needed to be rehearsed and which actors are good with rehearsal, which actors learn from it, and which ones grow stale because they start to second-guess themselves.

My first performance was as one of the orphans in 'Oliver!'

I had always heard that theatre is for 'serious' actors but after actually having rehearsed day in and day out, I realize how challenging it is.

When you do action stuff and sci-fi stuff, you have a lot to hide behind - the hair and the makeup and the special effects. But when you play a normal girl, it's challenging because you have to trust yourself.

When acting, I can wear another person's clothes and act out the attractiveness of a particular character, which is very interesting for me. Singing is something I love as well.

Theatre is for you if you truly want to act and test yourself. There is no room for error as you are performing in front of a live audience.

Actors put ourselves in awkward positions all the time.

A musical film is my idea of heaven. You can pre-record, you don't have to sing live. Singing live was the bit I hated the most. I never felt like a confident singer.

I love acting and really taking on another person, another life.

My wife says that stage acting is like being on a tightrope with no net, and being in the movies, there is a net - because you stop and go over it again. It's very technical and mechanical. On stage you're on your own.

I have learned that acting is not about beauty.

It's a strange thing we do as actors. I'm walking out the door, and I'll say, 'O.K., honey, I'm off to take my clothes off.'

I specifically remember doing the musical 'Sweet Charity' at Stagedoor. I was playing Vittorio Vidal, which is a very funny part, and some other small roles. I couldn't really sing that well, but there were so many fun bits, and I just remember the tremendous adrenaline rush I felt from being onstage and hearing the audience enjoying it.

With acting, I always feel conscious of what I'm doing.

Sometimes I think of movie acting as advanced pretend.

I think of being an actor as kind of a young man's gig. It's emasculating, in a way, people messing with you and putting make-up on you and telling you when to wake up and when to go to sleep, holding your hand to cross the street. I can do it up to a certain point, and then I start to feel like a puppet.

Having done a lot of theater, I'm used to sustaining characters over long periods of time.

As an actor, I've grown considerably. It's taken me years to get comfortable doing a romantic scene and dancing on stage in front of a live audience. I've really opened up a lot.