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 every day for two months.

Jackman recalls an early, formative experience in musical theatre: his first full “song-and-dance” performance, playing Gaston in Beauty and the Beast. The detail about red tights and knee-high boots underscores the costume’s theatricality and the role’s exaggerated masculinity, while “it’s very physical” emphasizes the athletic demands of stage performance. The admission of daily headaches for two months punctures any romantic notion of effortless showmanship, highlighting the bodily cost of learning performance technique—projection, choreography, stamina—before he became known for combining acting with musical and physical roles. The quote functions as a modest origin story about craft learned through discomfort and repetition.