Hugh Jackman in The Prestige
Interview: Hugh Jackman
“I did love the stage stuff,” said Jackman. “I loved it all. I did a lot of work with Ricky Jay and Michael Weber on the style of performance, and I really modeled my character, in terms of style, on a guy called Channing Pollock, who was a magician of the '50s, and actually became a
movie star in France later.”
Sounds like Jackman was into magic before this little movie came along. “Well, I was reading about Houdini just for my own pleasure before this, so maybe there's something serendipitous about that. I find the world fascinating, particularly this era, which is that Houdini era, because magicians were the movie stars, rock stars of the day. And there was an incredible contract with the audience at that time, where in America, spiritualism was an even larger religion or way of thought than Christianity. So magicians were seen as very real kind of mediators between the other world and this world. And so people bought into the magician's shtick really, whereas now they don't.”
Jackman’s character, Robert Angiers, becomes obsessed with outdoing rival magician Alfred Borden (Christian Bale). As assistants, the two were audience plants in Angiers’ wife’s escape trick. Borden’s knot was too tight one night and she didn’t make it out of the flooded tank.
“I think the roles of Christian and I were tailor made. My character is a very good magician, but Christian's is a great magician. My character elevates himself as a magician by his natural ability on stage, and I've had a lot of experience on stage, so that's something that comes easily to me. The character, at the beginning of the film, is fairly optimistic. He's ambitious, yes, but also optimistic. He enjoys his life and is excited by the possibilities. There's a tragedy that happens early on, in his personal life, and then, somehow, he's fueled by this ambition and the anger over what happened, and it turns him into being much darker, more intense and, ultimately, very dangerous person. I wouldn't say that's me, but I think the transformation was a lot of fun for me to play. In terms of the character at the beginning of the film, it's fairly similar to me, I think.”
Some close to Jackman think he may relate to the obsessive side as well. “My wife sometimes jokes that she thinks I'm a little bit of a workaholic, but my definition of a workaholic is someone who can't switch it off. I can easily switch it off. When I get into the car after work, I don't think about it. I work hard and I really enjoy it, I've always loved acting but I can switch it off.”
Stay tuned for updates.
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