❝Story19:30
Born for the stage, and the Chariots of Fire line that still makes him cry
Tim relays a mutual friend, Peter, who can work 12 to 14 hours a day seven days a week for years, and who told Tim he could not conceive of doing what Jackman does even twice a week. Jackman flips the frame — he finds Tim's hundred-mile swims equally incomprehensible, and says that watching the documentary Kim Swims makes him wonder what the human body is capable of. But he knows in his heart that he was born to be on the stage, and it took him a long time to feel the same thing on a soundstage. He anchors it in his favourite quote from any film: Chariots of Fire, where Eric Liddell's sister accuses him of wasting time on a silly running thing when there is God's work to do in China, and he simply looks at her and says that he feels God's pleasure when he runs. Jackman says the line always makes him tear up just saying it, and that is exactly what he feels on stage. It is the advice he keeps giving his own children — don't settle, find the thing that resonates with you that way, where you feel the pleasure of the universe or of consciousness, some joy that means you can do it longer and it is not such a Herculean effort.
- Tim's friend Peter, a relentless worker, could not imagine performing at Jackman's frequency even twice a week.
- Jackman finds ultra-endurance feats equally incomprehensible, so the capacity is domain-specific rather than general.
- He knows in his heart he was born to be on the stage, and it took years to feel the same on a film set.
- The Eric Liddell line — that he feels God's pleasure when he runs — is his favourite quote in any film and still makes him tear up.
- The natural energy is why the output is not a Herculean effort.
- His advice to his kids is not to settle until they find the thing that resonates that way.
“i know in my heart that i was born to be on the stage”
“but i feel his pleasure when i run”
“find that thing that resonates with you in that way”
#calling#energy#chariots-of-fire#vocation#stage
❝Story27:30
The nervousness before the interview, and the doubts that fuelled a career
In an unguarded aside, Jackman admits he was a little nervous before the recording — not talk-show nervous, but nervous because this is the only piece of media he actually consumes and is now participating in. He says he has learned more from the show in the last two years than from anywhere except his inner circle, naming Seth Godin and Esther Perel among the guests who changed things for him. Then he names the source of the nerves precisely: a habitual thought pattern telling him he is not the person people are going to listen to on the Tim Ferriss show, the same doubts that he says have clearly fuelled him in his life. He offers it, in his words, to be completely open and honest. Tim responds with something close to a public character reference, saying there is always a risk in meeting your heroes and that Jackman is, with friends, family and fans alike, everything someone would hope him to be. His example is a pattern rather than an incident: Jackman shakes hands with everyone he meets and extends the same courtesy from a janitor to a prime minister. Jackman later complicates this himself, wondering aloud whether that is the real him or the alter ego his coach calls Perfect Tommy.
- Jackman was genuinely nervous, because the podcast is the one piece of media he consumes and now had to participate in.
- He says he has learned more from the show in two years than anywhere outside his inner circle.
- The nerves came from a habitual thought that he is not who people tune in to hear.
- He names those doubts as having fuelled his career while also being a burden.
- Tim's observation is a behavioural pattern: identical courtesy to everyone from janitor to prime minister.
- Tim notes that this kind of consistency is not how someone popped out of the womb — it takes deliberate thought and practice.
“i have learned more from your show in the last two years than anywhere else”
“those doubts that clearly have fueled me in my life”
“you are polite to everyone i mean i've seen you you shake hands with everyone you meet”
#self-doubt#authenticity#character#vulnerability#reputation
❝Story31:00
Your religion should be in your actions: his father's few maxims
Tim reads a line from an old Good Housekeeping interview: in a fellowship where everyone wore the fish symbol to mark themselves as Christian, the teenage Jackman asked his father why he did not wear it at work, and his father said your religion should be in your actions. Jackman fills in the context. His father was converted by Billy Graham and his mother was not, a divergence that contributed to the end of their marriage; his mother left when he was eight and he was raised primarily by his father, an accountant at Price Waterhouse and a Rhodes Scholar. His father rarely offered maxims, but the few he had stuck. At 13 or 14 Jackman brought home a fish sticker for the car and was disappointed by the answer, thinking it a cop-out. Only later did he see the mechanism: if people know through your actions, it is far more powerful when someone eventually says there is something about you, I do not know what it is, but I would love to know where I can get it — because then there is an opening. The other maxims: you cannot over-invest in education, and if in doubt, go and learn more. A strict ethics on keeping your word — if you accept a mate's invitation and the Queen invites you an hour later, you stick with the first one. And from his mother, the line she still says: everyone needs to feel appreciated, no matter who they are.
- His father was converted by Billy Graham; his mother was not, and the divergence contributed to the end of the marriage.
- Jackman initially read 'your religion should be in your actions' as a cop-out and only later saw its power.
- The mechanism is that observed behaviour prompts an unprompted question, which is a real opening.
- You cannot over-invest in education — if ever in doubt about what to do, go and learn more.
- The ethics test: a prior invitation from a mate outranks a later one from the Queen of England.
- From his mother: everyone needs to feel appreciated, which Jackman extends via Brené Brown to being seen for who you are.
- He credits his wife Deb with acting purely from instinct where he sometimes acts from trained manners.
“and he said your religion should be in your actions”
“you cannot over invest in education that's one he would say to us”
“everyone needs to feel appreciated it doesn't matter”
“you keep your word no even if it does not benefit you you always keep your word”
#integrity#values#parenting#ethics#modelling
❝Story39:30
The journalism degree and the sliding doors moment three weeks from graduation
Tim asks how Jackman came to be so articulate, noting he originally studied communications at the University of Technology in Sydney intending to become a journalist. Jackman traces it to family: he was always in the debate team, his brother is one of Australia's most successful barristers and an incredible debater, and his father — a Rhodes Scholar — would eviscerate you in one line if you were not on your game. There was family dinner every night and Sunday lunch, always with conversation. He was accepted into a dual economics and law degree, took a gap year, and realised it was not for him, switching to a new communications course he knew little about. The turn came in his final semester. He filled an elective with a theatre class chosen specifically because a friend said it was the easiest option — four hours a week, no exam, no play. That year the course decided to stage a play for the first time in its history, and by ballot, with no auditions, Jackman got the lead. Touring it to another university, he walked into a student house thick with the smell of weed and felt all over his body that he had made a mistake — that he should have been doing this course. Three weeks from graduating in journalism, he had turned right where he should have turned left.
- The articulacy came from debate teams, a barrister brother, a Rhodes Scholar father and nightly family conversation.
- He abandoned a dual economics and law degree during a gap year in favour of a new communications course.
- He took the theatre elective specifically because a friend promised it required no exam and no play.
- The course staged a play for the first time in its history and he won the lead by ballot, with no audition.
- He realised on graduating that he had spent 90 percent of his time on the play and loved it.
- Walking into a theatre students' house on tour produced a full-body certainty that he had chosen wrong.
- He graduated as a journalism major anyway and went straight to study acting.
“my father was a rhodes scholar you had to be on your game or he would literally eviscerate you in one line”
“i realize i've just spent 90% of my time doing that play and loving it”
“i had this feeling all over my body that i'd made a mistake that i should have been here”
#career-change#intuition#education#sunk-cost#origin-story
❝Story51:30
Saying yes to Beauty and the Beast, and the label that nearly cost him film
Asked for his best early decisions, Jackman names drama school first, then the attitude he graduated with: you have to say yes to everything, just say yes, go for everything. The test case arrived when his agent called about auditioning to play Gaston in Beauty and the Beast. His reaction was that he was a theatre actor, not a singer. She thought he should go for it, so he said yes, got singing lessons, and got the part — and his contract stipulated a company-paid singing lesson every week, which he suspects makes him unique in the history of the profession. Singing eight times a week with a weekly lesson is, he says, really where he learned to sing. Then the cost showed up. He started getting well known for the musical, and saw a list posted at the theatre describing him as Hugh Jackman, comma, singer. His immediate reaction was that he was being labelled, that this was going to be a problem — and it was. There was, at least in Australia, a snobbishness about musical theatre: you were a performer, not an actor, jazz hands rather than craft. He could not get a film audition at all, which drove him crazy, and so he made a decision to get out of musical theatre entirely until he had established himself as an actor.
- His graduate rule was to say yes to everything and go for everything.
- He considered himself a theatre actor and not a singer when the Beauty and the Beast audition came up.
- His contract required a company-paid weekly singing lesson, which is where he actually learned to sing.
- Seeing himself listed as 'Hugh Jackman, singer' at the theatre triggered an immediate sense of being labelled.
- Australian snobbishness about musical theatre treated performers as non-actors, and he could not get a film audition.
- He responded by deciding to leave musical theatre until his acting career was established.
“you got to say yes to everything when you graduate just say yes go for everything”
“they had hugh jackman comma singer”
“i couldn't get an audition for film”
#saying-yes#typecasting#skill-acquisition#career-strategy#musical-theatre
❝Story53:30
The audition he did not want to win, and the role he should not have refused
These are the two decisions that taught Jackman to trust his gut, and they are exact mirrors. Having sworn off musicals, he learned Trevor Nunn was coming to Melbourne to do Sunset Boulevard. Nunn had been a huge hero through drama school, the Royal Shakespeare Company the dream. So Jackman rang the casting director — a move he now calls pretty arrogant — and asked a favour: he wanted to meet Trevor and audition for him, but he did not want the job. She agreed through gritted teeth. The audition became the most incredible hour he has ever spent; Nunn heard him sing and worked with him for 40 minutes, and about halfway through Jackman decided that if offered the part he would take it, musical or not. He got it, learned an enormous amount, and Nunn went on to cast him in Oklahoma in London — which gave him the confidence to take on the world stage. Then the mirror. Three musicals in and still unable to get a film audition, he doubled down on his no-musicals rule. When The Boy From Oz was pitched to him he had exactly the same gut feeling — this is going to be amazing, you have to do it — but his head cited the commitment, so he turned it down. Two years later he watched the show and was sick to his stomach, because it was everything he had known it would be.
- Jackman asked a casting director to arrange an audition for a job he explicitly did not want, purely to meet Trevor Nunn.
- The audition became the most incredible hour he has spent, and halfway through he changed his mind about the job.
- Nunn cast him in Sunset Boulevard and then Oklahoma in London, which gave him the confidence for the world stage.
- The lesson he draws is simply that when you have that gut feeling, go with it.
- He then overrode the identical feeling on The Boy From Oz because of a rule he had made for himself.
- Seeing the show two years later made him physically sick, because it was exactly what he had sensed.
- He concludes that he was making a strategic plan in his head and it was wrong.
“i really want to meet him but i've made this decision i've got to go into acting but can you just do me a favor…”
“when you have that gut feeling go with it and i haven't always done that by the way”
“there i was making some strategic plan in my head and it was wrong”
“from that moment on i have always followed my gut on stuff even if it doesn't make sense”
#intuition#career-decisions#regret#mentorship#trevor-nunn
❝Story59:30
Praying for clarity, reading the signs, and the cheque for the exact amount
Tim asks how Jackman relates to intuition now, admitting he has spent much of his own life trapped in the front of his brain, over-analysing, and overriding feelings about deals and partnerships he should have listened to. Jackman calls this probably the most vexing and vital thing to work out in a life, and shares something he says he has never said publicly. Raised in a very religious household, his instructions for life came through the parables, and he remembers praying nightly with an unusual request: he did not care what God wanted him to do — if it was collecting rubbish, he would collect rubbish — he only wanted it made clear. His summary line is the key one: he had much more fear of being on the wrong path than of failing at a path. The essence survived his changing views on religion, becoming what Joseph Campbell called following your bliss — a calling beyond the conscious brain's strategising. His illustration is the cheque. Accepted off the reserve list into a one-year acting course, he got a letter demanding a three-and-a-half-thousand-dollar tuition fee. Having just graduated and unwilling to ask his father, he ripped the letter up and binned it. The next day a cheque arrived from his grandmother's will, for exactly three and a half thousand dollars.
- Jackman prayed nightly not for success but for clarity about which path was his.
- He feared being on the wrong path far more than he feared failing on one.
- He connects the feeling to Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire and Joseph Campbell's follow your bliss.
- He still battles it because he can be dominated by pros-and-cons thinking.
- Four years with life coach Lauren Zander have gone into clarifying priorities so turning points become clear.
- He ripped up the acceptance letter rather than ask his father for the tuition fee.
- A cheque from his grandmother's will arrived the next day for the exact amount, which he reads as a wallop in the face from the universe.
“i had much more fear of being on the wrong path then i had fear of failing at a path”
“there is some calling that is beyond the conscious brains strategizing of how to be happy and successful in meaningful in life”
“i literally ripped up the letter screwed it up put it in the bin”
“i manifest every single day that i will hear those messages”
#intuition#signs#calling#decision-making#manifestation