Hugh Jackman is an actor who is used to bleeding, at least on the big screen. While he was pretty used to healing quickly as Wolverine over the past couple of decades, in real life, Hugh Jackman bleeds like the rest of us. Which is why he probably should have heeded his doctor's warning when it came to not singing during his pitch for The Greatest Showman. Hugh Jackman recently told the story of what happened, and there was bleeding involved. He said on Today:
I had a skin cancer and [the doctor] said, 'You gotta get it out.' I said, 'Can we wait until like after the performance?' He goes, 'No, it's cancer.' So, he put 80 stitches in my nose and everything was fine. And I thought, I'll turn up the next day and there were probably 80 people, bigwigs all ready to make the decision about will we or won't we. The director was not happy with me, but I had someone singing for me. So, I would do the scenes, and he would do the song. It came to the last number. I thought, 'I'll just sing the first line. I'll sing the second line, it's quiet.' And then I was off, you know. I'm a big ham. So, I started singing, finished the number. It was a good showbiz moment. And then all of a sudden, I felt this trickle of blood.
I'd just like to point out that you'd have to be super committed to a gig to hear that you have cancer and for your immediate concern to only be about what you have going on in the office the next day. In the case of The Greatest Showman, Hugh Jackman had a lot riding on the meeting in question. The Greatest Showman was a sort of pet project for him, a period story about P.T. Barnum with a musical component. The flick was seven years in the making, between the first germ of an idea to this month's release, and when pitch time came, it had to be good.
Hugh Jackman happily told Savannah Guthrie on Today that he got too animated during the performance. He really tried to reign it in at first. The doc told him he couldn't perform the musical numbers because he had stitches in, and he even had a dude come to the pitch meeting to do the musical stuff for him. However, Hugh Jackman is a performer at heart, and when it came time to do the final number, "This is the Greatest Show," he really just couldn't contain himself. To his credit, it is a pretty vivacious, exciting musical number. You can see the song performed in the latter part of the trailer, below.
Hugh Jackman's face looks totally fine in recent interviews, so I'm assuming all is well that ended well. As for The Greatest Showman, the new musical film hits theaters on December 20. To take a look at all the other non-musical movies hitting theaters this month, check out our full movies schedule.
