by Gill Pringle in LA
Hugh Jackman didn’t need to think twice when director Craig Brewer asked him to play a man who will do anything just for the chance to get up on stage and perform.
He immediately understood the fire that drove real-life aspiring musician Mike Sardina – a one-time car mechanic and cover band singer – in musical biopic Song Sung Blue.
“If you just look at it on paper, it’s a struggle, but he just seems to have this optimism and never-ending kind of faith that he’s going to live his dream,” recalls Jackman, 57, who likewise was driven to pursue his own musical ambitions, despite already being a successful actor.
“Mike never takes his eyes off the prize, which is to be a musician, to entertain people. He is a true entertainer in the sense that he loves to make people happy.”
If Jackman has been singing his entire adult life, then he was unprepared to meet his match in Kate Hudson, 46, whose own musical talents had been a secret prior to the release of her debut album Glorious last year.
But, together, they make beautiful harmony in Song Sung Blue, based on two real life down-on-their-luck musicians who form a joyous Neil Diamond tribute band, proving that it’s never too late to find love and follow your dreams.
“We’d already really bonded as people, as actors,” Jackman says of his co-star.
“But there was one day when we were sitting on the couch, and they just put a mic in front of us and recorded us – and that’s when I got the chills; that’s when I knew, musically, we would blend,” he says describing how they transformed Diamond’s lesser-known 1969 song ‘Holly Holy’ into an emotional powerhouse.
For Hudson, too, she knew this beautiful tear-jerking movie would work from that moment on. “The studio is a very vulnerable place, because they’re picking up everything of your voice. And as artists, you don’t like certain things, but you have to try things and be really open. So, it was a great entry point for us to break open a bit and be vulnerable with each other,” she says.
Inspired by Greg Kohs’ 2009 documentary of the same name, Brewer’s film introduces us to Mike and Claire Sardina, a working-class couple who each had tough lives but somehow found love and salvation performing together in bars and carnivals.
Working under the stage name of Lightning and Thunder, both came from failed marriages, yet they still took a chance on starting a family together. Mike’s “Lightning” was a Vietnam vet who struggled with alcohol while Claire’s “Thunder” was a single mum who battled with depression.
The real Neil Diamond, 84, was well aware of Lightning and Thunder, regularly welcoming Claire to his gigs, and happily allowing Jackman and Hudson to perform his songs in the film.
“You don’t see a lot of commercials using Neil’s songs. He doesn’t give it up easily, but he just loved this story,” says Jackman.
“And so, I said to him – ‘Oh, I’d love to come over for a cuppa and talk about it. This is a very Australian thing, by the way!’ And he was like: ‘Yeah, okay, sure.’ And then I got on the phone with his wife Katie, and she said: ‘We’re in Colorado.’ So I said: ‘OK, I’ll still just come for that cuppa,’” says the New York-based Jackman
“And she was like, ‘so I guess you’re staying the night?’ I went: ‘That’d be great!’ So we had dinner and then the karaoke machine came out, and I was just like: ‘Please, someone video this!’ And we did, and his first song was: ‘I Dreamed a Dream,’” he says referring to the song his co-star Anne Hathaway performs in their hit musical Les Miserables.
“Then we sang ‘Falling in Love with You’ and ‘Sweet Caroline’. And at one point, he put his arm around me and kissed the top of my head. It was just this beautiful moment.”
A little like Lightning, today Jackman has found love second-time around with Tony-winning Broadway actress and singer Sutton Foster, 50, the couple sharing so much in common, making their red carpet debut together at the Hollywood premiere of Song Sung Blue.
“What I loved about this couple is how they rescue each other. They go through a lot, but they believe in each other and are there for each other,” Jackman says of the film.
The experience of meeting Neil Diamond has made him a lifelong fan. “Everyone knows the power of music, and we’ve all felt it at some point in our life, some more than others, and it means a lot. As someone who’s a singer – when I really listened to Neil, I was like, ‘he’s an amazing singer,’ like he was a cantor when he began.
“And sometimes, he’s got that kind of rock. He’s got a little bit of a crack and like, and then it’s very pure. He can sing anywhere up and down his range, at any volume, at any tonal quality. He is amazing,” he says of the legendary singer-songwriter.
“I also love that this movie is a love letter to ‘tip jar’ musicians. And I say that with such respect; there’s so many brilliant musicians who barely eke out a living, but still do it because they have to – and they will get up anywhere and sing,” adds the actor who also learned how to play guitar for the role.
Director Craig Brewer knew that Jackman would be up to the challenge. “I told Hugh, ‘You got to get a little bit mad,’” recalls the Hustle & Flow director. “I wanted to see this crazy guy going after this crazy dream, and he’s just holding himself together with duct tape. He’s falling apart, but he just keeps at it. And Hugh really understood that he really wanted that.
“As a Hugh Jackman fan, I think it’s truly one of his best performances, if not his best work,” Brewer says.
Brushing off the praise, Jackman says that “it’s a working-class fairytale. You’ve got two working-class people trying to get by, working two or three jobs, all the while harbouring this dream to be up there on stage, where they feel most alive. It’s a fairytale because they hold their dream so tightly and with so much faith and hope and confidence that it comes true. But it’s not a straight line to fame and success . . .”
If Jackman’s own journey to success began in Perth – studying at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), then he has maintained strong ties with the city, citing his time there as one of the best periods of his life.
In fact, he plans to return there next year.
“I love Perth. And I will be there pretty soon, because my school is having a big thing, they’re opening a new campus,” he says.
But, until then, his regular Christmas holidays are postponed. “I’m working right up until the Song Sung Blue releases then – but hopefully I’ll get back to Australia in January,” he says.
And if anybody is looking to cast him, his dance card is empty, he laughs.
“I actually don’t know what I’m doing next at all – so I’m an open book.”
Song Sung Blue is in cinemas 1 January 2026
