Latest news with #JeanValjean
The Independent
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
How Hugh Jackman's most ‘humiliating' audition went down
Hugh Jackman recounted that his voice cracked while singing Les Miserables ' "Stars" during an audition, in a story he told the Hollywood Bowl during An Evening With Hugh Jackman. Jackman eventually played Jean Valjean in the 2012 film adaptation of Les Misérables, earning Oscar and BAFTA nominations. Jackman recently reprised his role as Logan in Deadpool & Wolverine alongside Ryan Reynolds. Jackman and Reynolds have become co-owners of Australia's SailGP champions, now rebranded as the BONDS Flying Roos SailGP Team. The team has signed a multi-year partnership with BONDS underwear, marking the first time the Australian SailGP Team has had a title partner.
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Hugh Jackman Recalls Bombing Audition Singing ‘Stars' from ‘Les Misérables' 30 Years Ago: ‘I Cracked on the Final Note So Spectacularly'
Hugh Jackman earned an Oscar nomination for his work as Jean Valjean in 'Les Misérables,' but things didn't go so well decades ago while belting out the musical's 'Stars' when he had to sing for the first time at an audition. 'I read first and I could tell it was going well,' Jackman said Saturday night during a performance of 'An Evening With Hugh Jackman' at the Hollywood Bowl. 'Then I sang and I cracked on the final note so spectacularly. Like it was the worst crack you could have ever imagined. Whatever excitement was on the panel, it just deflated immediately. I was about to run out, just humiliated.' More from Variety Wanda Sykes Urges Hollywood to 'Protect Our Trans Brothers and Sisters' at Critics Choice LGBTQ+ Celebration: 'That's Our Next Movement' Chad Stahelski on the 'John Wick' Franchise's Insane Body Count and Keanu Reeves' Fifth Movie: 'Still Working on It' Chuck Lorre Family Foundation Donates $350,000 to Van Ness Recovery House (EXCLUSIVE) 'But then the guy goes, 'Whoa, hold on a second. Why did you sing that song?'' Jackman continued. 'I said, 'It's the only thing I had music for. I'm sorry.' And he said, 'Well, you can throw that away. You'll never sing that again.' I think what he meant to say was, 'Why don't you put that to the side for like 30 years when you might sing it at the Hollywood Bowl?'' Jackman's performance Saturday night in Los Angeles served as the opening of the LA Phil's 2025 Hollywood Bowl season. 'I can get very chatty, but we have a curfew,' he said at the start of his show, adding with a smile, 'Or maybe we don't.' He went on to say that there would be no encore at the end of the night. 'We're going to do away with that whole charade,' Jackman said. 'The whole everyone walking off, but we all know everyone left their instruments on stage, we all know they're coming back. Going to do away with that.' Jackman was accompanied by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Wilkins, with several members of the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles (YOLA) joining when he performed 'A Million Dreams,' one of the many songs he sang from 'The Greatest Showman.' He also covered Neil Diamond's 'Sweet Caroline' during the 90-minute set. Jackman stars as a real-life Diamond impersonator who married a Patsy Kline impersonator (Kate Hudson) in the upcoming film 'Song Sung Blue.' Jackman offered John Denver's 'Thank God I'm a Country Boy,' but with an Australian twist. 'Aussies are kind of laid back,' he sang. 'I reckon' it's the best place on the map. Aside from the occasional shark attack, thank God I'm an Ozzy boy.' He continued singing, 'We live in a place surrounded by sea and koalas sitting among gum trees,' before capturing big laughs with the line, 'And every single girl looks like Margot Robbie, thank God I'm an Ozzy boy.' About last night with Hugh Jackman at the Hollywood Bowl. So much fun. — Marc Malkin (@marcmalkin) June 8, 2025 The 'Wolverine' star, dressed neatly in a tuxedo, also delivered a selection of Peter Allen songs. Jackman won a Tony Award for best actor in a musical for his portrayal of the late Oscar winner in 2004's 'The Boy From Oz.' The evening, which concluded with the Bowl's signature fireworks display, raised $2.6 million for the LA Phil's learning and community programs. The 2025 Hollywood Bowl season includes Cynthia Erivo and Adam Lambert starring in 'Jesus Christ Superstar' for two nights, Aug. 1 and 2. The summer program will also feature Gustavo Dudamel, Mumford & Sons, John Fogerty, Juanes, Cyndi Lauper, Diana Ross, Dave Koz, Josh Groban, Earth, Wind & Fire, a 'Grease' and 'The Sound of Music' sing-a-longs, 'Jaws' and 'Jurassic Park' concerts, Alabama Shakes, Herbie Hancock, a John Williams celebration and Charlie Wilson, Babyface and K-Ci Hailey and John Legend. Best of Variety 25 Hollywood Legends Who Deserve an Honorary Oscar New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: With One Week Until Voting Opens, Declining Submissions Create Tight Acting and Series Races
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Brodway comes to Erie to raise money for families in crisis
A local nonprofit tried out a new fundraiser Thursday night, taking the Broadway stage to downtown Erie. The Erie City Mission kicked off its newest charity event at the Warner Theatre called Broadway by the Bay. Owners cut the ribbon on new west Erie restaurant, Born & Braised Thursday night's event featured Broadway singer Ivan Rutherford, who portrayed Jean Valjean over 2,000 times in Les Misérables on Broadway. The event was also a kickoff to a fundraising effort to build a new 100-bed facility for women and children in crisis in Erie. Erie High students gifted parts for project by Erie Harley-Davidson 'The Erie City Mission services hundreds and possibly thousands of people throughout the year, but most of them are men, so one of Brian Johansson's initiatives when he became CEO was to open a house for women, specifically women and children that are suffering from poverty or addiction,' said James Washburn, co-chair. If you would like to donate to the Erie City Mission's cause, Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Guardian
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo review – masterpieces from a man with a heart as big as the Notre Dame
Victor Hugo is the French equivalent of Shakespeare and Dickens. The inventor of Quasimodo and Jean Valjean is so universal that we absorb his myths even if we have never picked up one of his books. Yet how much do most of us know about Hugo himself, behind the books, the films, the musicals? By dedicating an exhibition to this versatile creator's visual art, which started with a few caricatures and developed into sublime and surreal masterpieces, the Royal Academy does something unexpectedly moving. It takes you into the secret heart of a man we tend to think of only as a classic. For instance we discover that Hugo campaigned against the death penalty nearly two centuries ago. His 1854 drawing Ecce Lex (Behold the Law) is a macabre inky portrait of a hanged corpse, part of his doomed campaign to save a condemned murderer called John Tapner. Hugo opposed capital punishment on principle, but a few years later gave permission for this drawing to be made into a print protesting the execution of American anti-slavery activist John Brown. If there was a liberal cause, Hugo threw his huge heart into it. One of the first drawings you encounter in this sensitively curated show is his sketch of the council chamber in the town hall of Thionville in the north-east of France, after it was left in ruins by the invading Prussian army in 1871. Thus, in his late 60s, he added war artist to his vocations of author and campaigner, and recorded the violence of the Franco-Prussian war. In fact, this disaster for France improved his own life. It led to the fall of the dictator Louis Napoleon, whom Hugo had defied, choosing political exile on Guernsey, where he created some of his most haunting art. That was his public life. Hugo's art, however, takes you under his skin, without rules or any audience except himself, absolutely free and dauntingly creative. You can feel the isolation and soul-searching in his 1850 sketch Causeway, which dwells on nothing more than a bleak rocky causeway, perhaps his road to exile. In a drawing beside it he ponders the woody morass of a soaking breakwater in Jersey – the first Channel Island to which he fled. Sketch? Drawing? It's hard to define exactly what these are. Hugo uses a mixture of ink, charcoal, graphite and wash to create his murky paper visions. Sometimes he works on a tiny scale: The Abandoned Park, a silhouette-like image of trees beside a mirroring lake, is just 4.4cm tall and 3.5cm across. The miniaturisation adds to the ghostliness. Yet he can also take drawing to staggering largeness, as in the final depiction of a Guernsey lighthouse with a frail staircase spiralling up to a mystical, hopeful light. At times Hugo is just the writer doodling – using up spare ink, he said – yet his doodles develop. A symmetrical ink stain, like a Rorschach blot, has little faces drawn into it. Other frolics that Hugo called 'taches', or stains, are boldly abstract. Sometimes they form themselves into cosmic visions of planets or unreal landscapes but others remain free and formless. Out of this wild freedom a theme emerges: architecture. This should not be a surprise because after all the real hero of his novel Notre-Dame de Paris is not Quasimodo but Notre-Dame itself – a tottering, unloved old pile of stone when Hugo wrote it. So as well as Dickens, he resembles those Victorian champions of the gothic Ruskin and Pugin. But he's Ruskin on a lot of beaujolais, his imagination drunk on gothic turrets and spires; castles on hilltops or by lakes; fairytale castles and nightmare castles; real ones and dreamed ones. When he visited the town of Vianden, in today's Luxembourg, its castle fascinated him so much he lived in it for three months. He depicts it as shadowy and unreal, like a design for a 30s horror movie. In a second drawing the castle is a floating phantasm above a rickety array of wooden houses: not so much Dracula's castle as Kafka's. When Hugo lived on Guernsey he turned his house into a gothic retreat with a Romantic interior full of fantastical touches. It is evoked here with spooky photographs and a battered mirror whose wooden frame he painted with colourful birds. His fireplace, which he sketched, was emblazoned with a huge H, as if he were a medieval lord. Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion We think of French art in the 19th century as a series of 'isms' – Romanticism being defeated by realism giving way to impressionism which inspired post-impressionism. Hugo was a Romantic yet he lived on until 1885, doing the art we see here into old age – and it is timeless, eternally contemporary. Uninterested in artistic fashion – his living came from writing – he followed his own fancy. Like Goya, whom he often resembles, this makes his art speak directly to us. Here is a portrait of an octopus, which he must have seen from the Guernsey rocks, its flailing tentacles making him, and you, wonder if it has a consciousness. Hugo feels the universal pulse of life. He can empathise with medieval outcasts, hanged men and cephalopods. What an artist. What a soul. Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo is at the Royal Academy, London, 21 March to 29 June
Axios
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Dallas-Fort Worth theaters to show "Les Misérables," "The Lion King" and "Mamma Mia!"
"Wicked" may not be in Dallas for more than a year, but there are still great musicals to see before then. Why it matters: Musical fans in Dallas-Fort Worth don't have to travel to Broadway to see some of the biggest shows. Zoom in: The region attracts some of the biggest touring musicals, but there are also smaller theater organizations showing older Broadway classics. What's next: Broadway Dallas has already announced its next season, which includes touring hits like "Wicked" and "Six." Here are some upcoming shows: 🇬🇷 "Penelope" sings March 13-30 at Stage West in Fort Worth. The one-woman musical follows Penelope's experience while she waits for her husband, Odysseus, to come home. 🇫🇷 "Les Misérables" dreams March 18-23 at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth. Follow ex-convict Jean Valjean as he tries to live a normal French life after prison. 🕰️ "Back to the Future: The Musical" time travels March 18-30 at the Music Hall at Fair Park. Marty McFly goes back to 1955 in a DeLorean and immediately wants to get back to his time. 🛏️ "Once Upon a Mattress" rests March 21-30 at the Repertory Company Theatre in Richardson. The classic musical comedy is based on "The Princess and the Pea." 🌗 "Jekyll & Hyde" duels from March 28 to April 19 at Lyric Stage in Dallas. The musical is based on the classic Robert Louis Stevenson book about the duality of man. 🔎 "Clue" investigates March 25-30 at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth. The classic board game moves to the stage to figure out which character using which tool in which room committed a murder. 🥧 "Waitress" serves from March 29 to April 20 at the Dee & Charles Wyly Theatre in Dallas. Grammy winner Sara Bareilles wrote the music for the show about a woman who wants to open a pie shop. 💼 "Catch Me If You Can" runs April 4-20 at the Runway Theatre in Grapevine. The musical, like the movie, follows a conman who poses as a doctor, pilot and lawyer while an FBI agent tries to find him. 🕺 "Mamma Mia!" discos April 15-27 at the Music Hall at Fair Park. A bride tries to figure out which of three men is her father, set to the music of ABBA. 🦁 "The Lion King" roars June 4 to July 3 at the Music Hall at Fair Park. Based on the Disney movie, the musical follows Simba as he becomes king of the Pride Lands. 🛼 "Xanadu" skates from June 5 to July 6 at Theatre Three in Dallas. The musical based on the movie shows what happens when the Greek muses come to life to help start a roller disco.
