He is a nice chap, Hugh Jackman. He can cut up rough with the best of them on screen, but as soon as the camera stops rolling he is likely to apologise to the poor unfortunate who has just been on the receiving end of his actorly rage. In fact, Stephen Sommers, the director of his latest blockbuster, had to tell him off about it. On set in Prague, where Van Helsing was filmed, Jackman was in full flow — leather clad, hair extensions flying in the wind and a vampire-blitzing crossbow in hand — as he hunted some ghoulish maidens through a picturesque square.

“You try and choreograph these things as much as you can,” Jackman explains. “And Steve was doing these huge wide shots with the camera on me as I had to run around with this crossbow through all of these extras. It was really difficult not to bump into them.”

The extras were all suitably attired in 19th-century outfits as Prague doubled as Transylvania, and were no match for Jackman, who at 6ft 2in (1.89m) is built like a decent rugby full-back and probably charges about like one, too.

()“I was pretty beefed up for this role, and the costume was heavy boots and this huge overcoat, leather waistcoat, that sort it thing. So I was a bit of a battering ram. And it was mayhem with the Brides of Dracula attacking this village and me running after them. I was knocking over everyone . . .

“At one point, Steve yelled ‘cut’ and then said: ‘Hugh, would you please stop apologising to people when you knock them over. I really don’t care who you knock over.’

“And I said: ‘Mate, if you wanted to edit this in a certain way, you could make me the most unlikeable film hero in history. I’m supposed to be helping these people and I’m bowling ’em over like ninepins.’”

Jackman laughs at the memory.

When we speak, he still hasn’t seen the finished film, but he has reason for optimism. Sommers knows how to handle action heroes. After all, anyone who transformed Brendan Fraser from the dimwit sub-Tarzan of George of the Jungle to the sexy, swashbuckling Indiana Jones clone in The Mummy isn’t going to mess with his star turn. And Van Helsing is meant to knock ’em dead in Pasadena, as well as Prague. We are talking a serious money-spinning franchise here.

Sommers wrote the script with Jackman in mind but, when they met to discuss it, the actor was dubious. He was about to get his steel claws out again to play Wolverine in X-Men 2 and was not looking for another action picture.

()“I did have a moment of saying: ‘Should I go from X-Men to another big action adventure movie?’ Steve still laughs about that. He said: ‘You’re the only actor in Hollywood I know who is frightened of being in two big franchise movies.’ I got over it. A good movie is a good movie and you can’t complain about being in a film that people might want to see two or three of.”

The character of Van Helsing first appeared in print in Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1897 and made his screen debut in 1931. Throughout the years he has popped up again and again — notably in Francis Ford Coppola’s operatic 1992 version in which Anthony Hopkins plays him as Professor Abraham Van Helsing, part scholar, part sharp-stake specialist.

Sommers has successfully revisited Universal’s extensive horror back catalogue before, of course, with The Mummy, which is about the only monster that Jackman’s Van Helsing doesn’t have to face. This is Van Helsing as ghoul hunter, a gun-slinging loner and the only force for good in an evil old world as he comes up against Dracula (Richard Roxburgh) and his naughty Brides, werewolves (the dancer Will Kemp as Wolf Man) and Frankenstein’s monster (Shuler Hensley).

“This is taking a few liberties with Bram Stoker’s version,” understates Jackman. “It’s the young, swashbuckling, more adventurous version of Van Helsing. He hunts down Dracula or any possessed soul. He’s out there nailing them.”