Jude Law shares newfound sympathy for ‘bad adults’

Jude Law, 50, has taken on the role of a lifetime with a crew of outstanding child actors as he joined the cast of Disney’s latest live-action remake Peter Pan & Wendy.

As Captain Hook, Jude has teased the new take on the villain offered by the film, explaining to Express.co.uk and other media how it’s fundamentally changed his outlook on adulthood.

Standing in the pouring rain at the Peter Pan & Wendy world premiere in London, the Hollywood star revealed how he refused to make his portrayal of Hook a caricature but rather chose to delve into the real psychology behind his actions.

The father-of-seven explained that as an actor he “had to be on Hook’s side” and see “Pan as the baddie” but seemed visibly moved as he recalled looking at “the damage done and the pain” inside the villain.

He shared: “It’s a tricky one isn’t it, every bad adult probably had a tough decision thrown at them at one point and it brought them to a place that maybe they regret, maybe they don’t regret.

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“Maybe they’re just surviving.”

Speaking to ExtraTV at a fan convention in California last year, the jet-setting star emphasised that he still wanted the character to be scary.

He shared: “I think it’s important. A part of childhood is the nightmares and fears we all have and Hook, like a lot of villains in Disney, embody that.”

Jude revealed much of his preparation for the role went back to the original novel which described Hook as “the only pirate that Long John Silver was scared of”.

Having seen the original illustrations for the character in said novel, Jude and director David Lowery were insistent on getting the costuming just right.

For the actor, this meant refusing any prosthetics to create the Captain’s iconic moustache.

Luckily, the actor had just wrapped filming Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore for which he had grown an “enormous moustache”, and preparing his whiskers for the Captain Hook role slowly became an “obsession”.

Peter Pan & Wendy is available to watch on Disney+.