Imposter syndrome and the struggle to achieve success also applies to stars. It can happen even if your name is Hugh Jackman or Kate Hudson, even though today they are two of the brightest stars on the Hollywood scene. Not even they have been freed from the fears of being typecast, of not succeeding or, in their day, of not knowing if they could pay the rent with their acting jobs. Now, and they know how lucky they are, their lives are different. The Australian, 57, and the Angelina, 46, have crossed their professional paths for the first time with the film Song Sung Blue: Song for Twoin which they play normal people, a couple from Milwaukee who are passionate about Niel Diamond’s music, and their fight for it to lead them to success, but along whose path more misfortunes than joys cross. It is also one of the few times in their careers in which they play real people.
Jackman and Hudson arrive at the talk, a long after-dinner meal in a Los Angeles restaurant with a dozen journalists, wanting to talk about Mike and Claire Sardina, their alter egos on the screen, the couple who decided to go from bar to bar singing Sweet Caroline and company throughout Wisconsin and surrounding areas, with better intentions than fortune. The story of these Diamond performers, not imitators, is one of many families that seek to earn their bread on that plane of fame, perhaps not as brilliant, but just as desired. “Fame and fortune can have more names, it can also be that your community knows you and you can pay the rent. It’s that simple. With the same noise, the same pride,” explains the screenwriter and director of the film, Craig Brewer, also present in the conversation.
He was the one who saw a documentary, at the Sundance festival, about a married couple formed by the duo called Lightning&Thunder, and became obsessed with it. Even before writing the script for that story, he had put Hugh Jackman in the loop and, with his Mike, they both looked for a Claire, and saw her immediately. Jackman called Craig and told him that he was watching an interview with Hudson where he said that actors spend their lives waiting for a role. “Will it be written? Will they offer it to me? Will I meet the date?” she said, explaining that the only thing she loved and could control was music and that she was going to start recording albums and going on tour. Jackman and Brewer were more than clear: “Fuck, it’s Claire!”, recalls the director during the conversation. Her vision led to the actress being nominated for a Golden Globe today for that role.
Hudson recognizes himself in those words. Music is his passion, and now he has found a partner to share it with. “Acting, singing, is where I feel most alive,” Jackman says. “I believe that music, whether you sing it or listen to it, has the power to connect everyone, it gets you out of your head and makes every part of you come alive.” “I can get even more morbid,” laughs her partner. “I think I would be dead without music. Music saves my life. I know it sounds tremendously dramatic, but for me it is like that, I feel like that is where I have found many different parts of myself and I have discovered new ways of expressing myself simply by listening to how others express themselves through music. And I think it really is the great language that unites people. No matter what happens, two people can connect, even if they have different points of view, it is a great bridge,” she reflects. “There’s a connection you can’t explain. I’d say that’s why I’ve had so many musician boyfriends,” Hudson laughs. She was married to Chris Robinson, leader of The Black Crowes, and has a child with Matt Bellamy, singer of Muse, and another with her current partner, musician Danny Fujikawa.
During filming, and also in promotion, Hudson and Jackman have become a team on red carpets, events and even karaoke; They have attended a couple of them, at least publicly, with friends and the team. He publicly congratulated her when she was nominated for the Golden Globe. They formed a duo as natural as the lightning and thunder they play. “As a couple, they are much more,” Jackman acknowledges about their characters. The actors chat with the press just the day after the premiere of the film in Los Angeles, where they met some of the protagonists and their families. “There is a whole community of people who are part of their tribe, they have gathered their family, their children and stepchildren, and that is the power of that love. And I think about this love story, you know? It doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter how much money you have, or in that room there was just that tribe gathered together.”
“They are very much in love,” explains Hudson about their characters. “And I think we live in a time where it’s very easy to be with someone and then not be with someone. And you long for what it means to truly believe in a union, to believe in each other enough to get through anything. And there’s something inspiring about that, about how to overcome difficulties.” At first, he explains that he preferred not to get too close to the authentic Claire to avoid connecting with her, because “he ran the risk of imitating her, of becoming something inauthentic.” Now, he admits, they are both very close and sometimes he even has the feeling that they look alike physically.
Both find similarities with their characters beyond the physical. “That tenacity to dream big, to not give up, I keep,” Hugh says of his Mike. “Look for beauty in everything,” says Kate de Claire. Also, for example, the search for a purpose. “I think there is external recognition and then there is the reason why you do something,” reflects the actress. “If your purpose is to truly create, then it doesn’t matter what they say outside. And it’s the same with Claire and Mike,” he compares. “If you stick to the essentials, you don’t create art for others, you hope they like the art you create. That’s the goal, you do it because you feel you have to do it and you have to trust your instinct and what it dictates to you,” he explains. But if art is created to be liked, he says, and the response is not what was expected, “the industry can disappoint you a lot.” “And you’re never going to find happiness in it if that’s the driving force. I think growing up in that environment I understood that very early.”
Hudson and Jackman’s careers are long and established, but their origins couldn’t be more different. “I’ve been grateful for my career from the beginning. I’ve never taken it for granted. And part of it is because, when you grow up in it, you know how tumultuous it is and what the industry does,” acknowledges Hudson, daughter of actress Goldie Hawn and singer Bill Hudson, although raised by her mother’s partner, actor Kurt Russell. Jackman, on the other hand, comes from a more humble and common background. “I constantly pinch myself about my career, I’m very different from Kate, I did two degrees and four years of acting, and my first job was when I was 26. I was making $1,200 a week on an ABC television series, and I was like, ‘This is incredible, this is fantastic.’ I’m still paying the rent after five years, or rather, if I can’t pay it, I’ll quit.’ I thought: ‘I don’t want to be the thirty-something who stays too long at the party,’ admits the Australian. He arrived at the party on time and never had to leave: “The opportunities have been incredible.”
The story of the Sardinas, small and relatively low-budget (around 30 million dollars), has taken her, queen of romantic comedies, and him, king of musicals and superhero wolves, out of their comfort zone. The struggle between the commercial and the critical is difficult, and against being pigeonholed, which can be a blessing or a punishment. They both reflect on it: “When you’re successful at something, everyone wants to put you in a box,” Hudson says. “You become someone who can be trusted to keep telling that story over and over again, which, by the way, I greatly appreciate and love doing,” acknowledges the actress, while her partner shakes his head in approval. “The problem is that no one who gets into this business does it to be pigeonholed. Let’s face it, artists are rebellious and wild and a little unpredictable, and when someone tries to pigeonhole you, it usually comes from the other side. And you either play that game and carry on, or you try to figure out what to do and put your head down, do a good job and hope that you work with the best people possible and that you get hired, that they call you to do the things that you got into the business for, that It’s a little bit of everything,” he says, in a slow reflection, before asking Jackman: “And what do you think, Wolverine?”, and starting to laugh.
He also can’t help but laugh, and then reflect on a certain era. “If I look back, between X-Men 2 y 3…I mean, I’ve done 10…so at some point during that period, maybe the stuff that was coming to me was a little mediocre, right? But I never felt that way because, although many people in the film world didn’t know it, I was still doing theater all the time, so I would go back and play Peter Allen in The Boy from Oz“, he says about the musical that won him a Tony Award. But for him the most difficult part of his career was the beginning, because he had never sung, and he went from theater school to television and, from there, to musicals. At that time, many performers who did that type of work “were not considered actors, but people from the world of entertainment”: “And they have no idea how difficult it is to act when you sing.” And then he was afraid of being pigeonholed. “So I stopped doing some things related to music and luckily for me, that’s when I got the role of Wolverine and things started to look up. But I’ve always been doing different things. He may not have been as well known for them, but he always seemed very varied to me, which was very important to me. “Like for you,” he gives to Hudson, who has now become an eternal karaoke companion.