"X-Men Origins: Wolverine" star Hugh Jackman isn't someone you would think ever had to count calories and dodge carbs, but his "Australia" director, Baz Luhrmann, ordered him to trim down before they teamed up to do their musical production number at the Oscars.

The problem wasn't that Hugh was too fat, but too muscular. While preparing to shoot "Wolverine," he really bulked up with muscles. "My goal was to make him [Wolverine] look like an animal," Hugh tells the AP. "I wanted people to be unnerved when they saw him."

But Baz was certainly unnerved when he saw how big Hugh was becoming during the shooting of "Australia." "Baz said, 'Mate, whatever you're eating, can you slow down a bit because I'm going to struggle to edit this together,' " Jackman recalls.

Looking ahead to the Oscars, Baz told Hugh, "You've got to lose weight. You're too bulky."

So how did Hugh drop the poundage? "Singing and dancing is the greatest diet in the history of the planet," he says. "Well, that and performing in front of a billion people."

Would he take on the unnerving challenge again to emcee the Oscarcast?

"X-Men Origins: Wolverine" took out Hugh Jackman's claws and slashed through those vicious film critics' reviews (only 37 score at RottenTomatoes, 44 at Metacritic), making a penetrating impact at the box office. "Wolverine" snared $87 million this weekend in the U.S., $170 million worldwide.

Whew. That's an impressive rally, which E! Online credits with being an "Oscar bump." The New York Times had growled over "Wolverine:" "It is the latest evidence that the superhero movie is suffering from serious imaginative fatigue." Fending off those kinds of savage attacks early on, "Wolverine" looked like it may be up for Razzies and I worried that poor Hugh Jackman may be kudos cursed. Just a few months ago, his thrilling "Australia" got cheated out of deserving Oscar love by grumpy critics, some of whom were the same assassins who went gunning for him after Hugh did a masterful job rescuing the Oscar ceremony as host.

I have a theory about why these critics predictably take aim at him — it's all about testosterone-blinded nerds furious over his metrosexual appeal — but let's move on. Let's weigh the other awards potential of "Wolverine." The first "X-Men" (2000) flick earned noms at the MTV Movie Awards for best film, on-screen team and breakthrough male performance (Hugh Jackman) but lost to, respectively, "Gladiator," the "Charlie's Angels" gals and — yikes — Sean Patrick Thomas ("Save the Last Dance"). Halle Berry lost best actress to Drew Barrymore ("Charlie's Angels"). "X-Men" was nommed by the sound editors' guild but lost to "Gladiator" and competed at the costume guild but lost to "Erin Brockovich." Usually, films that get recognized by industry guilds break through with corresponding noms at the Oscars, but "X-Men" didn't.