Hugh Jackman didn't want The Death of Robin Hood fight scene to look 'too cool'

Hugh Jackman didn't want his fight scenes in The Death of Robin Hood to look "too cool".

The Australian actor, who plays an ageing, grey-haired version of the legendary outlaw in the new film, felt physically depleted fighting his co-star Elijah Ungvary in real mud for one particularly "brutal" fight.

Jackman and Ungvary decided to lean into their exhaustion so the messy brawl didn't look "too cool" or "pretty".

"When we were rehearsing, Elijah and I were so exhausted from this long battle and crawling and fighting, and we didn't want it to be pretty," he told Entertainment Weekly. "We kept telling (director) Michael (Sarnoski) just how tired we were and how we didn't want to be too cool."

The Greatest Showman star noted that his genuine exhaustion led to his "favourite moment" in a fight sequence, where Robin Hood takes a brief rest before finishing someone off.

"He talked about it, Michael and I were like, 'That's kind of a cool moment. He's just lying on this man's chest,'" he added.

Sharing more details about the challenging scene, the director said, "That was all real mud. It was pouring rain the day we were shooting that stuff, and it was like a foot deep of mud. Hugh and Elijah got their faces buried in the mud."

Jackman, who is best known for playing Wolverine, stayed in shape for his latest role but wanted his build to look different to the X-Men mutant.

"I knew there was a lot of physicality in it, so I was in shape, and I would do my normal routine," he explained. "I wanted him to be a bit leaner, because we thought that's what the reality of a hermit would be."

The Death of Robin Hood, in which he plays the iconic folk hero in the last chapter of his life, will be released in U.K. cinemas on 2 September.