During a remote appearance on The Tonight Show, the Oscar nominee synonymous with the Marvel superhero revisited his audition for the role in the first X-Men back in 1999. As Jackman revealed, "I think the entire audition was about 20 seconds. It wasn't much longer." Though the actor has nine movie performances as Wolverine on his acting resume, at the time, he was a backup plan no one thought would actually come to fruition. "When I walked into that room, I was pretty sure that I wasn't playing the role," he recalled to Fallon of the audition. "It was a weird audition because Dougray Scott had the role and then he got caught up on Mission Impossible 2, but everyone thought that would get sorted." In the mix of the uncertainty, "The studio said, 'Look, we need a backup plan just in case,'" Jackman said. He flew back the next day from Toronto and did not think anything would come of it. "Who would have thought nine movies later, 20 years later that would have happened?" he mused. In fact, after getting the role, the star also recalled a friend telling him that comic book movies were dead and that he should book another movie before X-Men came out.