Hugh Jackman has established his wildly successful acting career on the strengths of his action movie prowess and musical ability. That, and being an all-around good guy. He's one measly award (fine, an Oscar) away from EGOT status, so it's safe to say he knows how to pick a script. Which makes it all more surprising to hear that his latest role is the only one that he has felt truly compelled to play.
Jackman takes the lead in The Son, Florian Zeller's stage-to-screen follow up to the The Father (there is also the play, The Mother in Zeller's catalogue of works). The Father won big at the Oscars for its devastating portrayal of a man's (Sir Anthony Hopkins) paranoid descent into dementia, and the impact it has on his daughter (Olivia Coleman).
In The Son, Jackman plays Peter, a successful New York City lawyer who two years ago divorced his wife Kate (Laura Dern), remarried (Beth, played by Vanessa Kirby) and had a new baby. Now, Kate is knocking on Peter's door extremely worried about their 17-year-old son Nicholas (Australian newcomer Zen McGrath), who is in the midst of a severe bout of acute clinical depression.
"I can count on one hand the amount of times I've felt an urgency to play a part," Jackman revealed to Esquire while dissecting three scenes from the film for a game of 'Freeze Frame'.
"I didn't think I was going to be able to get it because I'd heard the director was speaking to another couple of actors. It was frustrating for a while because I was like, 'This is my part, I can feel it, I know how to play it. This is a story I think needs to be told. These are conversations around mental health we need to have urgently, particularly post pandemic. I was dying to do it.'"
Aside from Dern ("she's so amazing, she's got to be one of the top five actors alive today") the actor also shared an anecdote about a particularly poignant scene with Sir Anthony, who Zeller enlisted again to play his father in the film.
"I was asked in an interview not long ago if there was one moment in your career you could recreate what would it be and I said, 'Oh, filming with Anthony Hopkins'. I'll never forget it."
