Hugh Jackman may have earned an Oscar nomination for his role as Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, but the actor recently recalled a much less glamorous moment from early in his career involving the same musical.
During his performance of An Evening With Hugh Jackman at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday night, he opened up to the crowd about a painful audition memory.
“I read first and I could tell it was going well,” Jackman shared.
“Then I sang and I cracked on the final note so spectacularly. Like it was the worst crack you could have ever imagined. Whatever excitement was on the panel, it just deflated immediately. I was about to run out, just humiliated.”
Instead of letting him go, though, one of the panelists asked him why he chose that particular number.
“But then the guy goes, ‘Whoa, hold on a second. Why did you sing that song?’” Jackman recalled. “I said, ‘It’s the only thing I had music for. I’m sorry.’ And he said, ‘Well, you can throw that away. You’ll never sing that again.’ I think what he meant to say was, ‘Why don’t you put that to the side for like 30 years when you might sing it at the Hollywood Bowl?’”
Jackman’s concert marked the opening night of the LA Phil’s 2025 Hollywood Bowl season, and he charmed the audience not only with his vocals but also with his humour.
“I can get very chatty, but we have a curfew,” he said at the start of the show, grinning as he added, “Or maybe we don’t.”
Later in the evening, he made it clear there would be no pretending when it came to the encore.
“We’re going to do away with that whole charade,” Jackman told the crowd.
“The whole everyone walking off, but we all know everyone left their instruments on stage, we all know they’re coming back. Going to do away with that.”
Dressed in a tuxedo, the Wolverine star also paid tribute to Peter Allen by performing a selection of his songs.
Jackman won a Tony Award for best actor in a musical in 2004 for playing Allen in The Boy From Oz, a role that has clearly remained close to his heart.
