8 Actors Who Didn't Read The Book Their Character Was Based On

“I haven’t read the books; I still have not cracked.”

If you’re a reader, 2026’s movie and TV schedule ought to make you pretty happy.

From all-new Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility adaptations to the controversial Wuthering Heights and yet another instalment in the Dune franchise, book adaptations abound.

Still, not every Project Hail Mary viewer needs to have read the 2021 novel it’s based on to enjoy the movie. And some actors have given incredible performances in film and TV adaptations, despite having never so much as opened the original text.

Here are just a few stars who went in cold:

1) Not only had Hugh Jackman not read the X-Men comics before Wolverine, he reportedly didn’t even know wolverines existed

“I knew nothing,” the actor told Men’s Health. “I didn’t even know a wolverine was a real thing.

“I remember going to an IMAX, watching a documentary on wolves, [and] thinking Wolverine was part wolf.”

He also said that Wolverine’s director told him to “go to the zoo” after he started moving like a wolf on set.

Hugh has also claimed comics were banned on the set of 2000’s X-Men – he said director “Bryan Singer had this thing that people would think he really wanted to take comic book characters seriously, as real three-dimensional characters, that people who don’t understand these comics might think they’re two-dimensional, so no one was allowed [comics]”.

2) Ella Bruccoleri thought Austen was “posh” before landing The Other Bennett Sister

The Other Bennet Sister’s star, Ella Bruccoleri,........

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