Best quotes by Hugh Jackman

I'm not a kid. You don't get in this business for anonymity. It's not like I have posters of myself on the wall, but at the same time, I'm kind of ready for a little bit of it, but I worry for my little one, and my family - their privacy. That's what I'm more protective of.

If I go to a party I don't feel like I have to be in the centre. But I do find myself quite often being placed in that position. Even when I was younger at school, I would be asked to make a speech. I don't remember putting up my hand and all that often but I'd just find myself there.

It's always interesting - how do you actually convey thought through song? We're used to the convention on stage. In film, we used to be used to it, and now sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. You need to be fresh and really look at the material.

My father is a real idealist, and he's all about learning. If I asked for a pair of Nikes growing up, it was just a resounding 'No.' But if I asked for a saxophone, one would appear and next day and I'd be signed up for lessons. So anything to do with education or learning, my father would spare no expense.

My favorite play in drama school was 'The Bacchae.' It's about a king who literally gets eaten alive by all the women in the play in a kind of orgy - it's related to the word 'bacchanal' - and I loved that idea of animalistic chaos and following our own desires.

Nothing has ever opened my eyes like transcendental meditation has. It makes me calm and happy, and, well, it gives me some peace and quiet in what’s a pretty chaotic life!

My friends say, 'Man you're going to have kids sleeping on pillowcases with your face on it! You're going to be on toothbrushes and magnets and stuff.' I guess now that I'm a dad, I'm thrilled about that.

If I'm a lush at anything, it's food and drink. I'm not materialistic in any way, but I value food.

The last 10 years I have had to bulk up for roles and I'm naturally skinny, so I have eaten and killed so many chickens! I wouldn't even want to count. I need to balance that out.

When you're playing an icon like Wolverine, it's sometimes better to be someone that nobody knows because they don't know what to expect. I don't mind a little bit of anonymity; it helps on the subway.

Historically, much of the motivation for public schooling has been to stifle variety and institute social control.

In life you don't regret the things you do, you regret the things you don't do.

The longer it takes you to become successful, the harder it will be for somebody else to take it away from you.

If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.

Unless you're willing to fail miserably in the pursuit of your dreams, you'll never make it.

There comes a certain point in life when you have to stop blaming other people for how you feel or the misfortunes in your life. You can't go through life obsessing about what might have been.

We have far more ability than we give ourselves credit for.

Look, my philosophy in life is expect nothing and everything is a bonus.

If somebody in your industry is more successful than you, it's because he works harder than you.

Meditation is all about the pursuit of nothingness. It's like the ultimate rest. It's better than the best sleep you've ever had. It's a quieting of the mind. It sharpens everything, especially your appreciation of your surroundings. It keeps life fresh.

The definition of being good is being able to make it look easy.

Life has ups and it has downs. I don't care who you are.

Instead of setting goals, seek defining moments. Those are the real tests, because you have to be willing to fail in a pressure situation in front of other people.

If you put Buddha, Jesus Christ, Socrates, Shakespeare, Arjuna, Krishna at a dinner table together, I can't see them having an argument.

To me, the smell of fresh-made coffee is one of the greatest inventions.

Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Thing are made slowly and in pain.

What I respect as far as in myself and in others is the spirit of just doing it. For better or worse, it may work and it may not, but I'm going to go for it. Ultimately I probably prefer to be respected for that than whether it works out or not, either winning or losing.

Anyone who thinks they're indispensible is fooling themselves.

To have memories of those you have loved and lost is perhaps harder than to have no memories.

When your dreams becoming reality, they're no longer your dreams.

Giving people a hand up, not a handout, is the way forward.

I can live with failure if it is born of conviction.

Your idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing. The more amazing, the more people will click with your idea. The more people click with your idea, the more it will change the world.

Doing anything worthwhile takes forever.

Sometimes you have to go places with characters and emotions within yourself you don't want to do, but you have a duty to the story and as a storyteller to do it.

The word philosophy sounds high-minded, but it simply means the love of wisdom. If you love something, you don't just read about it; you hug it, you mess with it, you play with it, you argue with it.

I'd sell my soul for a good cause.

I treat auditions like I treated my first dates. It's an opportunity to get to know a stranger and to learn from each other.

I think the most interesting question is, why do you act? I act because I have felt in acting some of the most free moments of my life...I think it's also one thing that scares me the most.

If you never fall in love with your character, you'll never be able to do that character justice. No matter who it is, no matter what the character does, you have to find the reason for it. Everyone's got a reason for what they do, even if it's a reason that they're not proud of.

I truly believe that the job of an actor and the drive of an actor is simulating the internal journey in life which is to get deeper and deeper into our understanding of who we are.

To this day, I am the least materialistic person I know, because my father didn't raise me to just go out and buy this or that car. The only reason I wanted to make money as an actor was because I'm passionate about food!

I'm an actor who believes we all have triggers to any stage of emotion. It's not always easy to find but it's still there.

To get down to the quick of it, respect motivates me - not success.

I find that kid actors are great reminders of the simplicity of acting. As you get older, you can sometimes complicate things a little more. You can become too aware of, 'Okay, this is the scene emotionally. This is where we need to be. We've got the climax coming up.' You can start to analyze it too much.

I have two kids, career and I travel, and I don't think my life is any different than most couples. The most valuable commodity now for many people is time and how to parcel that out.

When people stop me in the street, and I can see they want to tell me more than they want the selfie, they want to tell me what it means to them, and that means a lot to me.

The Wolverine was fired from his job as a cashier in a newsagents after just six weeks because his boss said, "he talks too much to customers". He can talk to me all day.

If I could only do one exercise, it would be dead lifting. For cardio, I dance, I ride my bike, I run and I have kids. There is a... lot of cardio just from being a parent.

One thing I do personally started 20 years ago. I started meditating, and I know twice a day I can kind of let everything drop. It's just about being quiet, like drawing back the day, and it allows me to have energy.

I like to dress up in a tailored suit from time to time, and there's a tailor I go to in Naples who's fantastic. But if I told anyone his name, I'd have to kill them.

One of the Canadian customs guards got suspicious and said 'Haven't you been coming and going across the border a lot lately?' I finally told him I was auditioning for Wolverine and everything changed. One minute it was get ready for the strip search, the next it was come on and sign six hundred autographs.

I'm not a loner at all.

When I made 'Real Steel,' the director actually had the robots in the monitor, so he knew where everything was. So technically, there's been advancements. But at the end of the day, movies are about story and characters, so all the other stuff is great, but unless you have those two elements, then you've got nothing.

I don't think I knew how going to Ethiopia would affect my life, through a very simple choice of buying fair-trade coffee, we can take part in change.

It's absolutely physically demanding to play the role of Wolverine. There's a lot of action, and I try to do as much of it as I can because it's better for the audience.

Writer's block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you should feel the need to say something. Why? If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts. The noise will return soon enough.

The first show I ever did, singing and dancing, was Beauty and the Beast. I was playing Gaston. Gaston has red tights, knee high boots, and it’s very physical. I had headaches everyday for two months.

It's fair to say that, by 'X-Men 3,' Wolverine had gone a little soft, and I agree with them there. What fans love about Wolverine is his more uncompromising approach to life. He is who he is. He's not always a nice guy. He has got edge. He's an anti-hero. And, there's also a vulnerability in there. There is conflict and battles going on in there.

The activity of being a husband, a father - those are roles, too, but underneath them is the spiritual center that connects us all, and that's what's most important.

I have two children and it's amazing how in tune they are with nature, with light, with smells, with time.

I'm always very nervous about the word 'dancer' next to my name because anyone who's really trained in dance will go, 'This guy's fudging so badly.'

My kids are not that interested in my movie career, by the way. My son, in particular, never talks about it. He just wants me as his dad.

One of things I'd love to do one day is a Shakespeare with Trevor Nunn. I've done musicals with him, but never Shakespeare. There's no one better.

Singing is incredibly physical.

Tiramisu is my favourite.

And I think that, of course, there is some dysfunction of needing to be liked or noticed or to feel part of things, something going on there for most actors. For some there's not and I think they really struggle with it.

I had spent some time in the outback, but to meet Aboriginals and work with them was wonderful. It gave me a great appreciation of how tough life is and about the indomitable spirit that the Aboriginal people have always possessed.

Americans are the most generous country on the planet. I've worked in Europe, I've worked in Australia. There is no where else where you get absolutely no attitude for being a foreigner. If you do your job well, they embrace you.

There was a whole display set up of all the X-Men paraphernalia. My wife couldn't resist telling this 5-year-old boy that I was Wolverine. The little kid looked up at me and he was staring at me.

As you get older you have more respect and empathy for your parents. Now I have a great relationship with both of them.

My father was an army champion boxer... in the British army. And so he loved boxing and talked it up as a sport. But then when my brother and I were beating the crap out of each other, he was always trying to tone it down. But I am a fan of boxing.

But in another world, another life, probably growing up in another country, I might have been more of a dancer.

My parents were drawn to the idea that there was space and opportunity in Australia. For the meagre sum of £10, you could sail your entire family out to Australia, so that's what my father chose to do.

I have a wife and a son, but the gay rumors have started. I guess it's a sign that I'm moving up the ladder.