Hugh Jackman was left exhausted by the demanding shoot on The Death of Robin Hood.

The 57-year-old actor portrays the titular outlaw in Michael Sarnoski's movie and recalled how he had "mud in places that you don't want to know about" after taking part in a fight scene on the opening day of filming.

Jackman told IndieWire: "In Northern Ireland, based out of Belfast, on an island, almost everything was on location, but spectacular.

"That first scene in the mud, that fight scene... I was totally up for it, but I've never been so internally grumpy as I was that night. I was not far off: 'I'm done for the day.'

"It was a night shoot, and I was so exhausted. I still have mud in places that you don't want to know about. There was one point before I get on top of this Australian actor to actually kill him, where I was so tired that I just had to rest, and I was laying on him.

"When you fight to the death, and you've got fingers in eyeballs, and you're fighting, there's this weird proximity intimacy; I just lay there to rest. I thought there was something cool about that moment."

The Death of Robin Hood - in which Hugh appears alongside Jodie Comer, Bill Skarsgard and Noah Jupe - presents a darker take on the outlaw and Jackman believes it shows audiences to "be careful" about what to believe.

Asked about the message of the movie, The Greatest Showman star said: "Be careful of the stories you buy into. We get stories on all sorts of levels, from the day we're born. We get them from media, we get them from our parents, we get them from religion, from all over the place.

"Do they feel right for you? Because those stories have been used to do a lot of violent damage in history. What if the story or legend of him was actually his own creation to make people do terrible things, to follow him? Oh, what if it was all a lie? What if maybe there was a couple of rich people he stole from, but what if he never gave it to the poor? What if he was just a brutal murderer?

"Now, even at the end of the movie, we're not entirely sure."

Jackman explained that he is "blessed" that his status as an established movie star enables him to take risks on certain film projects - citing The Greatest Showman and the Wolverine film Logan as examples.

The Deadpool and Wolverine actor said: "I'm blessed that I can be in this position of doing things I really, really want to do. It (The Greatest Showman) did great, for the second-worst opening in history.

"The behind-the-scenes story of Logan was that there was a lot of resistance to that version, understandably: We were playing with established IP, and it wasn't called Wolverine, and it was R-rated: 'Why are you doing this?'

"'You know what, let's go for it. Let's just take the swing and go with our gut.' And so those two things exceeded everyone's expectations, and that has given me a confidence."