Hugh Jackman Credited Johnny Depp For 1 Lifelong Contribution to His Career That Helped Him Nail Roles Like Wolverine
Hugh Jackman is undoubtedly one of the most talented actors in Hollywood. His first professional job as an actor was in the 10-part Australian drama TV series Correlli, which aired on ABC TV in 1995. He gained recognition outside of Australia in 1998 when he starred in the Royal National Theatre’s stage production of Oklahoma!, which earned him an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical.
Jackman’s breakthrough came in 2000 when he played the role of Wolverine in Bryan Singer’s X-Men. He went on to portray a variety of other characters. While acting might not have been a big challenge for him, changing his accent from Australian to whatever was required of him for these roles might have been a little tricky. In a recent interview, he got candid about how one of Johnny Depp’s interviews helped him with that.
Hugh Jackman Revealed the Trick He “Stole” From Johnny Depp for Changing Accents
With the Guinness World Record of ‘longest career as a live-action Marvel superhero’ to his name, Hugh Jackman went on to reprise his role as Wolverine in several movies. Although he has mostly had to change his accent to American for his roles, he has also changed his accent to British for Missing Link and The Prestige, Transylvanian (English-speaking) for Van Helsing, French (English-speaking) for Les Misérables, and many others.
Switching accents like this might be a challenging task despite being in the industry for this long. Even so, Jackman has been nailing every single one of them so far. Every actor has a different technique for attaining this, and Jackman once revealed that he learned his from Johnny Depp while watching one of his interviews.
While promoting the 2011 sci-fi sports film Real Steel in an interview with Kevin McCarthy (via YouTube), Jackman was asked how he effortlessly changed his accent.
Actually I stole it from Johnny Depp. I heard Johnny Depp do an interview that he has a sentence that he will say that contains every vowel or consonant change for the new accent and he’ll say it before a take.
He also revealed the sentence Depp used for the accent change. It goes as follows:
How many times have you asked Sam whether or not his daughter’s learning disorder was caused by a genetic abnormality?
Jackman went on to say that it was just a “silly little thing” and that sentence contains every single difference, and sometimes merely saying it in his head triggered the accent change.
Johnny Depp Has Faced Criticism for His Accent
Having been in the industry for decades now, Depp has played numerous roles in his career with remarkably perfect accents. From a cockney accent as Sweeney Todd, Scottish for Finding Neverland, and a tongue-twisting Glaswegian accent as the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland, and the drunken British drawl as Jack Sparrow, the actor has had no issue doing accents.
However, this might have taken a toll on his real accent which is hardly audible anymore as it seems to have turned into a European-American blend. This is quite strange since he was originally born in Kentucky, but having done so many accents over the years, there is no telling whether the accent is original or not.
In an interview with Today while promoting Black Mass, his accent changed several times, which raised several eyebrows. Whether it was something he did intentionally to have some fun or not remains a mystery. That said, Howard Stern once criticized his accent while discussing Depp and Heard’s defamation trial in an episode of his show with co-host Robin Quivers (via Mediaite).
