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Today, few actors are more closely tied to their signature role than Hugh Jackman is to Wolverine. Even after he had the most perfect swansong imaginable for the character in Logan, it still managed to get its claws into him and bring him back one more time for Deadpool & Wolverine. But he nearly missed his chance to play everyone’s favorite surly mutant due to the greatest nemesis mankind has ever faced – customs paperwork.

Jackman told the story while on the press tour for his 11th film as Wolverine. As he was traveling to Canada to begin filming the first X-Men movie back in 1999, he almost got sent back due to a problem with his paperwork. “I was like, ‘Oh, I just lost the biggest break of my life.’ I told the guy behind the counter who had been so cold and he goes, ‘Sorry, I don’t understand. You mean you’re an animator?’ And I said, ‘No. It’s a normal movie, live action.’ He goes, ‘Hang on, you’re Wolverine in live action?’”

That was apparently all it took to change the man’s attitude. “And then I was doing photos, autographs, and every bit of paperwork just got stamped,” Jackman explained. It was the first inkling he had that maybe this role in a movie about a comic book he had barely heard of might be a bit of a big deal. X-Men would go on to help spark the surge of comic book films that would dominate the box office for nearly 20 years, and Hugh Jackman only got to star as Wolverine because the customs agent at the Canadian border was up on his comic books.

It isn’t the first time Canadian customs agents have shown their love for the greatest superhero their nation has produced (sorry, Captain Britain). Back in 2016, the Library and Archives of Canada “found” the military records of Wolverine and published them online as an April Fools joke.

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