Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy (The Greatest Showman)

Ever since Hugh Jackman was a young man, the people around him knew that he belonged on stage. Born in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Jackman started acting as early as five years old, taking dancing and singing lessons. From ages eleven to eighteen, the young actor stopped dancing lessons due to bullying. As an older and therefore wiser man, Jackman regretted the seven-year break and said, “Everyone should dance and have a good time and forget being embarrassed. It’s such a waste of life being embarrassed.”The actor began his career acting in the ten-part ABC drama series Correlli (1995) and played Gaston in a local Melbourne production of The Beauty and the Beast. Jackman found fame quickly through his iconic portrayal of the much-loved anti-hero Wolverine in X-Men (2000) playing alongside actors such as Patrick Stewart, Sir Ian McKellen and James Marsden. Over the years, as he continued to reprise the role of the Marvel character, Jackman worked both on camera and on stage, winning prolific awards. Jackman was nominated for his first Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for Kate and Leopold (2001) and won a Tony Award for his portrayal as Peter Allen in The Boy from Oz (2003-2004).He won his first Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for his role as Jean Valjean in Les Misérables (2013). The Australian actor is set to star in the movie musical Broadway 4D (2018) as Curly, a street performer who must choose between his dream of acting or to find his true love and in The Front Runner (2018), a drama about the scandalous love affair of Senator Gary Hart during his 1988 presidential campaign. Jackman stars in Michael Gracey’s The Greatest Showman (2017) as P.T. Barnum, which won him his third Golden Globe nomination in the same category: Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. This year he also appeared as Wolverine for the last time in the epilogue Logan. He compared the X-Men films with his musical role by tying their messages about differences and diversity together and said, “The idea of what makes you different is not something to be ashamed of. Yes, you can be discriminated for that but if you own up to it and we start to embrace everybody then it can be what makes life special and fantastic.”During the pitching process of the film, Jackman had skin cancer removed from his nose and was forbidden to sing in front of the film executives and restricted to dancing only. He recalled singing the last song of his passion project against doctor’s orders. “Couldn’t help myself,” he admitted. As more musical numbers were added to film, the rehearsal period lasted for about ten weeks, the cast working up to ten hours a day. Jackman said The Greatest Showman had the most challenging choreography of his career and required him to sing a B flat, the highest note he’s ever sung live. He added: “The most difficult scene was ‘Come Alive’ because of my 49-year old legs and knees. I’ve done a lot of dancing but this was the most challenging. Easiest? I had no easiest. I want them to be challenging. I’m asking people to come at Christmas with their families, I don’t want them to think I am just sitting in my Lazy Boy. It should be fun and challenging and all embracing!”