Hugh Jackman
Hugh Michael Jackman AC (born 12 October 1968)[1] is an Australian actor. Beginning in theatre and television, Jackman landed his breakthrough role as Wolverine in the X-Men film series (2000–2017, 2024), a role that earned him the Guinness World Record for "longest career as a live-action Marvel character", until 2022.[2] Prominent on both screen and stage, he has received various accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Grammy Award and two Tony Awards, along with nominations for an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award. Jackman was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2019.
Hugh Jackman
- Australia
- United Kingdom
- Actor
- singer
1994–present
2
Jackman has headlined films in various genres, including the romantic comedy Kate & Leopold (2001), the action-horror Van Helsing (2004), the drama The Prestige (2006), the period romance Australia (2008), the musical Les Misérables (2012), the thriller Prisoners (2013), the musical The Greatest Showman (2017), the political drama The Front Runner (2018), and the crime drama Bad Education (2019). For his role as Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, and for The Greatest Showman soundtrack, Jackman received a Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack. He also provided voice roles in the animated films Flushed Away, Happy Feet (both 2006), and Rise of the Guardians (2012).
Jackman is also known for his early theatre roles in the original Australian productions of Beauty and the Beast as Gaston in 1995 and Sunset Boulevard as Joe Gillis in 1996. He earned a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for his performance as Curly McLain in the West End revival of Oklahoma! in 1998. In 2002, he was in an Off-Broadway concert of Carousel as Billy Bigelow. On Broadway, he won the 2004 Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his role of Peter Allen in The Boy from Oz. From 2021 to 2023 Jackman starred as con man Harold Hill in the Broadway revival of the musical The Music Man, earning another Tony Award nomination. A four-time host of the Tony Awards, he won an Emmy Award for hosting the 2005 ceremony. He also hosted the 81st Academy Awards in 2009.
Early life
Jackman was born in Sydney, New South Wales, to Grace McNeil (née Greenwood) and Christopher John Jackman,[3] a Cambridge-educated accountant.[4][5] His parents were English and had come to Australia in 1967 as part of the "Ten Pound Poms" immigration scheme.[5] Thus, in addition to his Australian citizenship, Jackman holds British citizenship by virtue of being born to UK-born parents.[6][7] One of his paternal great-grandfathers, Nicholas Isidor Bellas, was Greek,[8][9] from the Ottoman Empire (now in Greece).[10][11] His parents were devout Christians, having been converted by Evangelist Billy Graham after their marriage.[5] Jackman has four older siblings and was the second of his parents' children to be born in Australia.[12] He also has a younger half-sister, from his mother's remarriage.[13] His parents divorced when he was eight, and Jackman remained in Australia with his father and two brothers, while his mother moved back to England with Jackman's two sisters.[5][14][15] As a child, Jackman liked the outdoors, spending much time at the beach and on camping trips and school holidays all over Australia. He wanted to see the world, saying, "I used to spend nights looking at atlases. I decided I wanted to be a chef on a plane. Because I'd been on a plane and there was food on board, I presumed there was a chef. I thought that would be an ideal job."[16]
Jackman went to primary school at Pymble Public School and later attended the all-boys Knox Grammar School on Sydney's Upper North Shore, where he starred in its production of My Fair Lady in 1985 and became the school captain in 1986.[17] He spent a gap year in 1987[18] working at Uppingham School in England as a Physical Education teacher.[19][20] On his return, he studied at the University of Technology, Sydney, graduating in 1991 with a BA in Communications.[21] In his final year of university, he took a drama course to make up additional credits. The class did Václav Havel's The Memorandum with Jackman as the lead.[12] He later commented, "In that week I felt more at home with those people than I did in the entire three years [at university]".[22]
After obtaining his BA, Jackman completed the one-year course "The Journey" at the Actors' Centre in Sydney.[12] About studying acting full-time, he stated, "It wasn't until I was 22 that I ever thought about my hobby being something I could make a living out of. As a boy, I'd always had an interest in theatre. But the idea at my school was that drama and music were to round out the man. It wasn't what one did for a living. I got over that. I found the courage to stand up and say, 'I want to do it'."[23] After completing "The Journey", he was offered a role on the popular soap opera Neighbours but turned it down[24] to attend the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts of Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia, from which he graduated in 1994.[25]
Jackman has said he "always loved acting but when I started at drama school I was like the dunce of the class. It just wasn't coming right to me. Everyone was cooler, everyone seemed more likely to succeed, everyone seemed more natural at it and in retrospect, I think that is good. I think it is good to come from behind as an actor. I think it is good to go into an audition thinking, 'Man I've got to be at my best to get this gig.'"[26]
Career
1995–1999: Early career in theatre
On the night of his final Academy graduation performance, Jackman received a phone call offering him a role on Correlli: "I was technically unemployed for thirteen seconds." Correlli, devised by Australian actress Denise Roberts, was a 10-part drama series on ABC, Jackman's first major professional job, and where he met his future wife Deborra-Lee Furness. Jackman stated that "Meeting my wife was the greatest thing to come out of it."[23] The show lasted only one season. After Correlli Jackman went on the stage in Melbourne. In 1996, Jackman played Gaston in the local Walt Disney production of Beauty and the Beast, and Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard.[12] During his stage musical career in Melbourne, he starred in the 1998 Midsumma festival cabaret production Summa Cabaret. He also hosted Melbourne's Carols by Candlelight and Sydney's Carols in the Domain. Jackman's early film works include Erskineville Kings and Paperback Hero (1999), and his television work includes Law of the Land, Halifax f.p., Blue Heelers, and Banjo Paterson's The Man from Snowy River.
Jackman became known outside Australia in 1998, when he played the leading role of Curly in the Royal National Theatre's acclaimed stage production of Oklahoma!, in London's West End.[12] The performance earned him an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. Jackman said, "I totally felt like it can't get any better than this. On some level that production will be one of the highlights of my career."[27] He also starred in the 1999 film version of the same stage musical, which has been screened in many countries.
2000–2004: Breakthrough with Wolverine and the X-Men
Jackman had his breakthrough role playing Wolverine in Bryan Singer's X-Men (2000)—a superhero film based on the Marvel Comics team of the same name.[28] Co-starring Patrick Stewart, James Marsden, Famke Janssen and Ian McKellen, the film tells the story of a group of mutants, whose superhuman powers make them distrusted by normal humans, but who fight to protect humans from villains. The role was originally written for Russell Crowe who instead suggested Jackman for the part.[29] Jackman says that his wife advised him against taking on the role, as she found it "ridiculous".[30] He initially studied wolves to develop his character, as he thought that Wolverine alluded to wolves.[31] X-Men was successful at the box-office, earning US$296 million.[32] The role earned him a Saturn Award for Best Actor.[33]
Wolverine was tough for Jackman to portray because he had few lines, but much emotion to convey in them. To prepare, he watched Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry movies and Mel Gibson in Mad Max 2. "There were guys who had relatively little dialogue, like Wolverine had, but you knew and felt everything. I'm not normally one to copy, but I wanted to see how these guys achieved it."[34] Jackman was adamant about doing his own stunts for the movie. "We worked a lot on the movement style of Wolverine, and I studied some martial arts. I watched a lot of Mike Tyson fights, especially his early fights. There's something about his style, the animal rage, that seemed right for Wolverine. I kept saying to the writers, 'Don't give me long, choreographed fights for the sake of it. Don't make the fights pretty."[35] Jackman also had to get used to wearing Wolverine's claws. He said, "Every day in my living room, I'd just walk around with those claws, to get used to them. I've got scars on one leg, punctures straight through the cheek, on my forehead. I'm a bit clumsy. I'm lucky I didn't tell them that when I auditioned."[16]
Production company
In 2005, Jackman joined with longtime assistant John Palermo to form a production company, Seed Productions, whose first project was Viva Laughlin in 2007. Jackman's wife Deborra-Lee Furness is also involved in the company, and Palermo had three rings made with a "unity" inscription for himself, Furness, and Jackman.[85] Jackman said, "I'm very lucky in the partners I work with in my life, Deb and John Palermo. It really works. We all have different strengths. I love it. It's very exciting."[86]