Hugh Jackman
The Song and X-Man

Born:   Hugh Michael Jackman on October 12, 1968
Birth City:  Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Father:  Christopher Jackman
Mother:  Grace Watson
Brothers:  Older, Ian and Ralph Jackman
Sisters:  Older, Sonya and Zoe (also has a younger half-sister on his mother’s side)

Spouse:  Deborra-Lee Furness, Australian actress, married April 11, 1996
Son:  Oscar Maximilian Jackman, born May 15, 2000 (adopted)
Daughter:  Ava Eliot Jackman, born July 10, 2005 (adopted)

Hugh Jackman Biography

A stage and screen actor of remarkable versatility, Australian Hugh Jackman had the unusual honor of being named one of People magazine’s "Sexiest Men Alive," while also maintaining fandom among legions of comic book enthusiast by portraying the muscular superhero, Wolverine, in the X-Men film series.  Audiences swooned over him in Baz Luhrman’s sweeping period drama Australia (2008), and honored him with a Tony Award for his portrayal of ostentatious songwriter Peter Allen in the Broadway musical, The Boy from Oz.  To top it all, he was asked to host the 81st Academy Awards on February 22, 2009, the most entertaining Oscar show for years, largely due to Jackman’s wit and showmanship.  Such a diverse following is testament to Hugh Jackman’s unaffected charm, leading man good looks, and classical stage training that equipped him to alternate between great displays of theatricality and the calculated reserve of his dramatic roles.  

Early Life

Hugh Michael Jackman was born on October 12, 1968, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.  The year before his birth, in 1968, his English parents migrated to Australia as 'Ten Pound Poms’ (under the Australian government’s scheme to encourage skilled migration).  His father, Chris, knuckled down as a hard-working accountant but his mother, Grace, did not adapt so well.  Hugh did not live with his mother for the first 18 months of his life and his parent’s marriage finally dissolved when Hugh was eight years old and his mother moved back to England, leaving him and his four older siblings to be raised by their father.  Years later, his mother remarried and Hugh has a half-sister from that marriage.

"My mother was not well," Jackman says. "She probably was suffering from postpartum depression. It may not have been diagnosed. I’m not sure. But she was going through a tough time. I spent my first 18 months with my godparents." -- Hugh Jackman: Parade, May 14, 2006

Hugh first went to primary school at Pymble Public in Sydney and then later attended the high-achieving all-boys school, Knox Grammar, where he was an all-rounder who became a school captain and excelled in sports and drama (he starred in the school's production of the musical My Fair Lady in 1985).

During his youth, Jackman drew great strength from his father, a devout Christian who brought up five children single-handedly through discipline and hand-me-downs.

"I’ve never heard Dad say a bad word about anybody including my mum. I love that quality about him." – Hugh Jackman

After receiving his B.A. degree in Communications and Journalism at Sydney’s University of Technology, Jackman switched to acting in 1991, turning down a role on the popular Australian soap opera Neighbours, to study at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth from which he graduated in 1994.

"Those three years were 'probably one of the happiest times of my life,” he says. “We’d do Shakespeare, then circus skills and singing and dancing.  It is a quality that seems to tap into my surname, Jack of all trades." – Hugh Jackman

Early Career

During those early lean years Jackman made his living as a clown at children’s parties, and worked in restaurants and gas stations, before receiving his first television break in 1995, in Correlli, a popular Australian prison drama.  Hugh played the role of violent and manipulative – but insidiously attractive – prison inmate Kevin Jones who falls for his counselor played by his future wife Deborrah-lee Furness. Corrielli was centered on her character, he was 26 and it was his first big job; Furness, then 34, was a celebrated actress in Australia.

"When you're married to someone, as you know, who loves you for who you are – and someone who I met before any of this happened – I met her on my first job.  I was a shmuck actor. Really, trust me, only $1,200 a week on an ABC TV Series in Australia.  There was nothing about me that was saying, ‘Hey, this is a good bet here.’  And when you know that you're loved completely for who you are, no matter what comes and goes – and by the way, this went through my mind when I walked out on stage at the Oscars." – Hugh Jackman:  Dark Horizons, April 28, 2009

The success of the series, combined with Jackman’s good acting skills helped him win a recurring role the following year in another television series, Snowy River: The McGregor Saga.  His relaxed and natural presence was soon tapped for hosting duties on the pop culture show In Fashion (Foxtel, 1997) and the 1997 Australian Film Institute Awards.

On stage in 1996, Jackman was hailed as one of the most promising newcomers in musical theater when he was cast in a Melbourne production of Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast, essaying the supporting part of macho villain, Gaston.  The tall and muscular Jackman still had to wear prosthetic pieces to pull off the exaggerated build of the character, but even with this added padding, his spot-on portrayal – complete with appropriate pomp and swagger – shone through.  

Jackman followed up by playing hack screenwriter Joe Gillis in Trevor Nunn's Melbourne production of Sunset Boulevard, easily making the transition from his previously larger-than-life boaster to the Hollywood-fueled broken man cynicism of Gillis.  His good acting handed him a Variety Club award for Musical Theater Performer of the Year and a Mo for Musical Theater Performer of the Year in 1997. 

Trevor Nunn was so impressed with Jackman's work he invited him to audition at London's National Theatre, and it was as Curly in the acclaimed West End production of Oklahoma! where his strong and energetic performance earned excellent notices and a nomination for the country’s top theatrical honor, an Olivier Award.  Jackman also starred in the 1999 film version of Oklahoma! which has been screened in many countries around the world.

Following his successful stage performances, Jackman made a move to the wide screen in 1999 when he made his film debut in the little-seen Australian production Erskinville Kings(1999), a drama examining failing relationships.  This was an emotional and challenging role for an actor so new to the art of film.  For his performance he won the 2000 Film Critics Circle Australia (FCCA) award for Best Male Actor, and was also nominated for the 1999 Best Actor by the Australian Film Institute.

He soon reached a much wider audience with his starring role in Antony J. Bowman's amiable comedy Paperback Hero (1999), where Jackman portrayed an outback trucker who writes a sappy romance novel in his spare time and submits it to a publisher under a female pseudonym. The role was perfectly suited for the open and unpretentious actor, and Paperback Hero earned Jackman acclaim and exposed him to an international art-house audience.

Stage and Film Career (2000 to present)

Months later, Jackman broke into the big time, when Scottish heartthrob Dougray Scott backed out of his commitment to play the Logan / Wolverine character in the first X-Men movie.  Jackman was selected by the film’s director, Bryan Singer, as a last-minute replacement for the role that would ultimately make Jackman a world-wide star.

According to the comic books, Wolverine stands 5-feet-3-inches in height. Jackman, who plays Wolverine, stands almost a foot taller than his characte at 6' 2".

"The character I play is actually only 1.6 meters [5' 3"]. Before I had any kind of acting profile I was encouraged to lie about my height. I was told to say I was about six foot [1.83m] tall. I was worried about it when I first had my audition because pleasing fans of the franchise is important. My height was brought up on the Internet. They didn't think it was right. A lot of people who never met me think I'm very short. Jimmy Marsden (Cyclops), who's only 10cm [4 inches] shorter than me, was put on boxes and platforms in our scenes together. You'll notice that every character in X-men looks taller than me." -- Hugh Jackman on Logan/Wolverine

Jackman’s performance as Wolverine in X-Men gained positive reviews from critics and handed him a Saturn Award for Best Actor in 2001. The film was also a large success at the box-office and became one of the biggest hits of the year.  With that huge triumph, Hugh Jackman was made an instant star. 

Jackman cemented his position as a movie star when he was hired to star in three silver screen films during 2001. He first costarred with Ashley Judd and Greg Kinnear in the romantic comedy Someone Like You.  He then tackled the role of a computer hacker forced to participate in a major heist in the action thriller, Swordfish opposite John Travolta and his X-Men co-star Halle Berry. Jackman then starred as Leopold, opposite Meg Ryan, in the 2001 romantic comedy film Kate & Leopold, a role for which he received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor, Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.  

On the small screen, Jackman hosted an episode of "Saturday Night Live" in 2001, and in 2002, sang the role of Billy Bigelow in the musical Carousel in a special concert performance at Carnegie Hall.  Off screen, Jackman was listed as one of People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People in the World for five years in a row, from 2000 through 2004.  On May 15, 2000, Hugh and his wife were present at the birth of their adopted son, Oscar Maximilian Jackman.

Hugh Jackman again donned the sideburns and claws of Wolverine for X2: X-Men United (2003), the superior sequel to X-Men in which his character, Wolverine, stood out amidst the rest of the terrific ensemble cast as bits and pieces of Wolverine's mysterious origins were at last revealed. Like its predecessor, the action film was also a smash hit.

Now an international movie star, Jackman returned to his love of musical theater and debuted on Broadway in 2003 in The Boy from Oz.  He starred as Peter Allen, the flamboyant showman best known for pop songs like "Don’t Cry Out Loud," who died of AIDS-related cancer in 1992. Jackman received a highly coveted Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical in 2004.  He also performed in the musical throughout Australia in 2006.

Jackman hosted the glitzy Tony Awards in 2003, 2004, and 2005, garnering positive reviews.  His hosting of the 2004 Tony Awards earned him an Emmy win for Outstanding Individual Performer in a Variety, Musical or Comedy program in 2005. 

Back in another pulpy turn on the big screen, Jackman played Count Dracula's old nemesis Dr. Abraham Van Helsing in the ultra-big budget monster thriller, Van Helsing (2004), which pitted the good doctor against an unholy union of his old foe, Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolfman.

Jackman also found time to appear in the short film (his wife’s directorial debut) Standing Room Only (2004), and made a cameo appearance in the television film Making the Grade (2004).  On the home front, Hugh and Deborra-Lee’s second adopted child, Ava Eliot Jackman, was born on July 10, 2005.

In 2006, Jackman revived Wolverine for the third installment of the series, X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), directed by Brett Ratner.  This time, the mutants faced a peculiar choice after a cure for mutations is found — retain their uniqueness and remain isolated from society, or give up their strange powers to become human.

In a further display of Jackman’s versatility, he turned around to play a charming British playboy suspected of being an infamous killer terrorizing London in Scoop(2006), Woody Allen’s comedy starring Scarlett Johansson as a journalist who poses as a wealthy American to snuff him out.  In Christopher Nolan’s period thriller The Prestige (2006), Jackman sparkled as a brash showman caught up  in a deadly rival with a brilliant trickster (Christian Bale). He lightened the mood considerably with his next project, lending his voice to the hit animated children’s adventure, Happy Feet (2006), about a tap dancing penguin.

Jackman played three characters in Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain (2006).  Spanning almost a millennium, he plays a conquistador, research scientist and astronaut at different points of human history – all in search of the secret of life.  Jackman said The Fountain was his most difficult film thus far, due to the physical and emotional demands of the part.

In 2007, Jackman co-produced and guest-starred in the television musical-dramedy series Viva Laughlin, which was canceled by CBS after just two episodes.

"We wanted [Gabriele Muccino] to do the pilot of ‘Viva Laughlin,’ which he did. The show was picked up and was quite spectacularly dumped after two or three episodes on air.  Not that it was his fault.  It just wasn’t a success.  As my wife says, ‘If you’re going to fail, you might as well fail spectacularly.’"  -- Hugh Jackman: The Examiner, May 2, 2009

Jackman's 2008 movies included Deception (which he starred in and produced) and Uncle Jonny.  Also in 2008, director Baz Luhrmann cast Jackman to replace Russell Crowe as the male lead in his much-publicized epic film, Australia, which co-starred Nicole Kidman.  In the film, Jackman played a tough, Australian cattle Drover who reluctantly helps an English noblewoman in her quest to save both her philandering husband's Australian cattle station and the half-caste Aboriginal child she finds there.

Of the movie, Jackman said, "This is pretty much one of those roles that had me pinching myself all the way through the shoot. I got to shoot a big-budget, shamelessly old-fashioned romantic epic set against one of the most turbulent times in my native country's history, while, at the same time, celebrating that country's natural beauty, its people, its cultures.... I'll die a happy man knowing I've got this film on my curriculum vitae." -- The Evening Herald, December 11, 2008

Adding icing to the cake, the film’s release coincided with People magazine’s annual declaration that for 2008, Hugh Jackman was the "Sexiest Man Alive."

When asked how his wife reacted, Hugh responded, "She said, ‘I could've told them that years ago.’ And then she said, ‘Obviously, Brad wasn't available this year.’ I said, you’re kidding, right?  But Deb is the most unfazed person in the world." – Hugh Jackman: Mail On Sundays, April 29, 2009

In April 2009, Hugh Jackman sank his hands and feet into the famous Hollywood Boulevard cement outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles.  After an introduction by Jay Leno, Jackman told the crowd that he’d first visited the landmark when he originally arrived in L.A. a dozen years ago.

"It’s a very humbling moment as an actor to be here. You look down at the names, from Fred Astaire to Cary Grant, Clint Eastwood, Al Pacino, Steve McQueen, John Wayne, and to think that those people have been immortalized and pretty soon I’ll be putting my hands in wet cement." -- Hugh Jackman: Entertainment Weekly, April 22, 2009

Jackman reprised his role as Wolverine in X-Men Origins: Wolverine which was released May 1, 2009. Prior to the release of X-Men Origins, Jackman hosted the 81st Academy Awards on Feb. 22, 2009, which garnered good reviews and increased viewer ratings from previous years.

"My dad was about strict bedtimes but he let us stay up to watch [The Academy Awards]. Then at drama school, our biggest party of the year was on Oscar night and there were drinks involved. It's a very common drinking game in Australia: Whenever anyone thanks or mentions God or their parents, you have to 'skull' (Translation: chug a drink)." – Hugh Jackman: People Magazine, February 21, 2009

Jackman finished out the year by co-starring with Daniel Craig on Broadway at the Schoenfeld Theatre in a limited engagement of the play A Steady Rain, opening in previews on September 10, 2009 and closing on December 6, 2009. Later, A Steady Rain came in at #2 on TIME Magazine's list of top 10 plays of 2009 - 2010. 

Charity Work

Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig made a unique place for themselves in the history of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS fundraising December 2009, when it was announced that they had raised $1,549,953 in the 21st annual Gypsy of the Year competition, from six weeks of curtain appeals at their hit Broadway drama, A Steady Rain.

Jackman is a well known philanthropist and longtime proponent of microcredit — the extension of very small loans to impoverished prospective entrepreneurs in undeveloped countries.  He is a vocal supporter of Muhammad Yunus, microcredit pioneer and the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner. 

Hugh Jackman is a global advisor of the Global Poverty Project, for which he narrated a documentary; and he and the project's founder Hugh Evans visited the UN for the cause in 2009. Jackman hosted a preview of the Global Poverty Project Presentation in New York together with Donna Karran, Lisa Fox and his wife Debbora-Lee. 

He is also a World Vision ambassador and participated in the climate week NYC ceremony on September 21, 2009.

Jackman supports The Art of Elysium and the MPTV Fund Foundation, and he and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness are patrons of the Bone Marrow Institute in Australia.

Jackman narrated the 2008 documentary about global warming, The Burning Season.

Hugh also uses his Twitter account for charity.  On April 14, 2009 Jackman posted on his Twitter page that he would donate $100,000 to one individual's favorite non profit organization. On April 21, 2009 he revealed his decision to donate $50,000 to Charity: water and $50,000 to Operation of Hope.

Production Company

In 2005, Jackman joined with longtime assistant John Palermo to form Seed Productions, a film, television and theater production company with offices in Los Angeles and Sydney. Seed's first film, Deception, was released by Twentieth Century Fox in April 2008. The production company also produced X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009).

Jackman's actress wife, Deborra-Lee Furness, is also involved in the company. About the trio's collaboration Jackman says,"I'm very lucky in the partners I work with in my life, Deb and John Palermo."

More Hugh Jackman Projects in Development »

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