HUGH JACKMAN HAS been playing the character of Wolverine for 17 years – ever since making his debut in X-Men back in 2000.

He’s played him in nine separate movies, so you’d think he’d be the world’s leading expert in all things Wolverine.

But an interview this week has revealed a rather hilarious anecdote about his research into the role.

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Of course, we all the know the wolverine – a small bear-like animal, pictured here chilling out on a tree

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Well, it turns out Hugh Jackman mixed up wolves and wolverines when researching the role when he first got the part.

He told the great, mortifying story to the Associated Press this week:

I didn’t even know there was a wolverine. I literally, embarrassingly did about two weeks of research on wolves. I was rehearsing for three weeks and I was shooting, so I was kind of on my own. I remember going past an IMAX in Toronto, and there was an IMAX documentary about wolves, and so I thought, ‘I’ll go and see that’

And it gets worse.

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Director Bryan Singer had to come up to him on set DURING FILMING and ask him what he was at:

He said, ‘Are you sort of walking funny, what’s going on?’ And I said, ‘I’ve been doing this thing with wolves,’ and he goes, ‘You know you’re not a wolf, right?’

I said, ‘Well, there’s no such thing as a wolverine’

And Singer just delivered the killer line:

Go to the zoo, dude.

Jackman finished out the anecdote:

I literally didn’t know it existed

Fair play for owning up in such a public forum – and he told the anecdote well.

So, now we know his one mental weakness – wolves:

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He’s probably just got the hang of it by now.

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