Hugh Jackman on Playing 'Valjean': 'It Just Feels Like a Pinnacle'

As BroadwayWorld reported Tuesday evening, Taylor Swift (Eponine) and Amanda Seyfried (Cosette) are the latest additions to the all-star cast of the upcoming Les Miserables movie musical adaptation, joining the previously set Hugh Jackman (ean Valjean), Russell Crowe (Javert), Sacha Baron Cohen (Thernardier), Eddie Redmayne (Marius), Aaron Tveit (Enjolras), Anne Hathaway (Fantine) and Helena Bonham Carter (Madame Thenardier). 

Jackman recently spoke to New York Magazine about his upcoming stint in the famous role, revealing how getting this opportunity feels like the apex of his professional career.

"I went hard for the part," he tells the mag. "I wasn’t sitting back waiting for this one. This is one I really wanted. I feel, weirdly, that all the things in my life — particularly my professional life, which has been close to twenty years — have been converging to this point. I feel very lucky and blessed to have been in movies, and I feel lucky and blessed to have been in musicals. I’ve been waiting a long time to combine the two, and to be able to do it with something like Les Miserables, it just feels like a pinnacle."

Jackman also reveals that he is just now beginning a new training regimen that involves plenty of rope hauling to get his Valjean body.  

For the full scoop, click here. 

The film will begin filming in March under the direction of Tom Hooper. All cast members will be singing live on film and the release date is currently set for December 7, 2012.

No stranger to musical performance, Jackman just finished a record breaking, SRO run at New York’s Broadhurst Theatre in Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway. He has won critical kudos and awards for the Australian productions of Sunset Boulevard and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. In London he starred in Trevor Nunn’s staging of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! at The National Theatre. This was followed by his Broadway debut portraying the 1970’s singer-songwriter Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz, for which he received the 2004 Tony Award for Best Actor in a musical as well as Drama Desk, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle and Theatre World Awards. In the fall of 2009, Jackman made a return to Broadway in a sold-out engagement of Keith Huff’s A Steady Rain co-starring Daniel Craig.

Hugh Jackman made his first major U.S. film appearance as Wolverine in the first installment of the X-Men franchise, a role he reprised in the enormously successful X2 and 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand. He reprised his role in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, one of the most successful ‘prequels’ of all time. On February 22, 2009, Jackman took on the prestigious role of Oscar host as he fronted “The 81st Annual Academy Awards.” Previously, Jackman served as host of the Tony Awards three years in a row from 2003-2005, earning an Emmy Award for his 2004 duties at the 58th annual ceremony, and an Emmy nomination for the following year. Other films Jackman has starred in include Darran Aronofsky’s The Fountain, Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige, Woody Allen’s Scoop and opposite Nicole Kidman in Baz Luhrmann’s epic Australia. In addition, he leant his voice to the animated features Happy Feet and Flushed Away. He has also played leading roles in DreamWork’s Real Steel, Someone Like You, Swordfish, Van Helsing and Kate and Leopold, for which he received a 2002 Golden Globe nomination.