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Hugh Jackman has often had to put on a massive amount of muscle to play the mutant anti-hero Wolverine. And although Jackman’s superhero physique may have been impressive to many, the actor’s wife wasn’t always a huge fan of it.
How Hugh Jackman got into Wolverine shape in the past
Jackman has shown that his workout for the role of Wolverine requires a lot of dedication and focus. Because of this, the actor used to stay in reasonable shape as much as possible. Doing so made it easier to gain the muscles he needed to reprise the role for a film.
“It’s too hard to get in shape from scratch, and it’s easier to stay in shape than to get in shape. … For Wolverine I really up the training,” Jackman once told the LA Times. “Right now I do about an hour of training a day and ride my bike everywhere. But I do about 2 1/2 hours of training a day when getting ready for the role, and foodwise I eat more, but I eat a lot stricter. Seventy percent of your physique is your diet, and diet is the biggest change that happens.”
The details of Jackman’s training was often a simple combination of lifting weights and cardio.
“I do heavy weights in the morning for about an hour, and then I do 45 minutes of higher-volume lifting in the afternoon. My least favorite is the legs. … I do quite a few chin-ups and rows. I do mostly old-school lifting with a lot of squats. I actually do more front squats than I do back squats, and I do a lot of deadlifting,” he revealed.
Jackman’s wife Deborra-Lee Furness had mixed feelings towards her husband’s physique whenever he prepared for Wolverine. A part of Furness appreciated Jackman’s drastic transformation.
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“’The best thing about being married to an actor is that I get to have an affair every few months,’” Jackman recalled Furness once telling him. “It’s a different kind of look all the time. But I’ve got to be honest, mate, being in a 3-D film on a 40-foot screen is pretty good motivation for being in shape.”
But there are also times where Jackman’s wife wasn’t too receptive of his body.
“She gets very annoyed. She says, ‘A husband’s job is to be fat and flabby and make me look fabulous.’ She said I wasn’t living up to my end of the bargain,’” Jackman once quipped to Cosmopolitan.
Jackman has usually been proud of the work he’s done with the Wolverine character. He’s soon set to reprise his role for the 2024 film Deadpool 3. But as grateful as he’s been for his run as Wolverine, there was a certain limit to his tenure as the character. If only because of the fact that he was getting older.
“I landed the coolest comic book character there is,” Jackman said in a resurfaced interview with Muscle and Fitness. “He’s badass, way cooler than me, and as an actor, his complexities, his tortured soul, make him endlessly interesting. The only problem is that the ‘real’ Wolverine doesn’t age, so there definitely is a ceiling for playing this part!”
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