By the time Hugh Jackman walked into an audition for X-Men in 1999, he had little reason to believe the job was actually available.

Another actor already had it.

Dougray Scott had been chosen to play Wolverine, one of Marvel Comics’ most recognizable mutants, while Jackman was still a relatively unfamiliar Australian performer whose biggest international breakthrough had come onstage in Oklahoma! in London. Jackman later remembered the audition as essentially a precaution—a backup plan in case Scott could not make the schedule work. He estimated that the audition itself lasted only about 20 seconds.

What happened next altered not only Jackman’s career, but the history of superhero movies.

Scott’s work on Mission: Impossible 2 ran longer than expected, and an injury further complicated the situation. With X-Men already moving forward, he could no longer take the Wolverine role. Jackman suddenly went from emergency option to leading man. Contemporary reports from October 1999 confirmed that he had replaced Scott.

Twenty-four years after X-Men reached theaters, Jackman would still be wearing the claws.

And almost none of it had been planned.

Wolverine Had Already Passed Through Several Hands

Even before Scott was cast, Wolverine had been difficult to lock down.

Russell Crowe was among the prominent actors approached for the role. Crowe declined, but his decision came with an important recommendation: filmmakers should take a look at another Australian actor he knew—Hugh Jackman.

Jackman has credited Crowe with helping put his name into the conversation, later noting that Crowe also recommended him years later for Australia.

Still, Jackman was hardly an obvious Wolverine.

He stood around 6-foot-2, much taller than the compact version familiar to comic readers, and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige later recalled that Jackman had initially been rejected in part because of his height. He also lacked the screen-action résumé audiences might expect from the man who would eventually become synonymous with adamantium claws and berserker rage.

Jackman himself apparently understood how unlikely the situation was.

After one early audition, he was so convinced he would not get the role that he assumed he would never see some of the filmmakers again. Feige, then working on the original X-Men, took him to dinner and drove him to the airport anyway—an encounter the two would remember decades later.

Then Scott became unavailable.

The backup got the call.

He Did Not Even Know What a Wolverine Was

Jackman arrived with another problem: he barely knew the character.

In one of the more remarkable stories from the making of the film, he has admitted that he did not realize a wolverine was a real animal. Preparing for the role, he studied wolves instead.

When director Bryan Singer noticed Jackman incorporating wolf-like behavior into the performance, the misunderstanding finally became clear.

Jackman had only a few weeks to prepare before filming, so there was little time for a slow transformation into Logan. He had to discover the character while the production itself was moving.

That rough beginning makes the finished performance even stranger in hindsight.

Jackman found a balance that would define his version of Wolverine for decades: violent but protective, sarcastic but wounded, intimidating yet capable of surprising tenderness. Instead of merely reproducing a comic-book image, he created a version of Logan audiences could emotionally follow through an expanding series of films.

And X-Men arrived at exactly the right moment.

A Movie Hollywood Wasn’t Sure Would Work

In 2000, superhero movies did not occupy the position they do today.

The modern Marvel Cinematic Universe did not exist. Spider-Man was still two years away. Hollywood had endured expensive comic-book disappointments, and Jackman later recalled being advised to line up another job before X-Men opened because some people believed the genre was effectively finished.

Instead, X-Men opened strongly and earned about $296 million worldwide against a reported $75 million production budget. Its success helped demonstrate that comic-book properties could attract mainstream moviegoers without abandoning the more serious themes of their source material.

For Jackman, it was instantaneous career acceleration.

He returned for X2 in 2003 and X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006, then became important enough to carry Wolverine-centered films of his own. Through sequels, prequels and cameos, Logan became the connecting figure of Fox’s sprawling X-Men franchise.

The role also evolved with Jackman.

The early Wolverine was the mysterious outsider entering Professor Xavier’s world. Later films explored his past, his relationships and the physical and emotional cost of living an unnaturally long life.

Eventually, the character reached someplace few superhero franchises were willing to go.

Logan Looked Like the Perfect Ending

Released in 2017, James Mangold’s Logan stripped much of the traditional superhero spectacle away.

Jackman played an aging, deteriorating version of the mutant, caring for an elderly Charles Xavier while becoming responsible for a young mutant, Laura. The film treated Wolverine less as an indestructible action figure and more as a man reaching the end of an exhausting life.

Its screenplay by Mangold, Scott Frank and Michael Green received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, an unusual level of recognition for a superhero film.

Jackman publicly treated Logan as his goodbye.

For years, he meant it.

Then Ryan Reynolds complicated everything.

Jackman later revealed that watching the first Deadpool in 2016 had planted an idea in his mind. The argumentative chemistry between Wolverine and Deadpool reminded him of mismatched buddy movies such as 48 Hrs. But he had already committed to retiring the character, so he pushed the idea aside.

It did not disappear.

Years later, while driving, Jackman suddenly decided he wanted to do it. He called Reynolds before even telling his own agent. The timing was extraordinary: Reynolds and director Shawn Levy had been struggling to find the right story for a third Deadpool movie and were approaching the point of stepping away from their current ideas. Jackman’s call gave them the central relationship they had been missing.

From Backup Actor to a $1.3 Billion Return

Deadpool & Wolverine arrived in July 2024, exactly 24 years after audiences first saw Jackman as Logan in X-Men.

The filmmakers protected the ending of Logan by using Marvel’s multiverse concept to present Jackman as another version of Wolverine rather than simply reversing the death of the character audiences had followed for years.

For the first time, Jackman also wore a costume closely inspired by Wolverine’s famous yellow comic-book suit—a visual moment that carried surprising emotional weight for people who had worked around the character for decades.

The movie ultimately grossed about $1.338 billion worldwide.

It was a remarkable destination for a relationship between actor and character that began with another man already holding the part.

Jackman has since become more cautious about declaring Wolverine permanently finished. In 2025, after once sincerely believing Logan was the end, he said he was no longer prepared to say “never” again. Marvel has likewise left open the possibility that there may still be more to explore with Wolverine and Deadpool.

Whatever happens next, the essential story is already complete.

Hugh Jackman did not enter X-Men as the carefully chosen centerpiece of a decades-long plan. He arrived because another actor could not make the schedule, because Russell Crowe had once mentioned his name, and because filmmakers needed a backup quickly.

Then the backup became Wolverine.

And for 24 years, Hollywood never really found a reason to replace him.