7 Actors Hugh Jackman Competed With to Play the Fan-Favorite X-Men (He Wasn’t the First Choice!)

Russell Crowe revealed that director Bryan Singer was advocating for him to take the role. However, he wasn’t interested from the beginning for one particular reason.

“Bryan [Singer, X-Men director] was a friend at the time and he was really putting the pressure on,” he recalled during an interview. However, appearing in Gladiator turned him off of taking on the role.
‘If you remember, Maximus [his Gladiator character] has a wolf at the center of his cuirass, and he has a wolf as his companion … which I thought was going to be a bigger deal [at the time],” he recalled. “So I said no, because I didn’t want to be ‘wolfy’, like ‘Mr Wolf.’”

He wound up recommending Hugh, which led to his audition.