Hugh Jackman

Jackman married Deborra-Lee Furness in 1996 after they met on the set of Australian TV show Correlli. Furness had two miscarriages, following which the couple adopted two children - Oscar Maximillian and Ava Eliot.

He is a global advisor of the Global Poverty Project and a vocal supporter of Muhammad Yunus, microcredit pioneer and Nobel Peace Prize winner,

Jackman was born on 12 October 1968 in Sydney, New South Wales, to Grace McNeil and Christopher John Jackman, a Cambridge-trained accountant. His parents were English and had migrated to Australia in 1967.

He has four older siblings, and a younger half-sister, from his mother's re-marriage. His parents divorced when he was eight, and his mother moved back to England with his two sisters.

He attended 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.

In his final year at the University of Technology, Sydney, he took a drama course to make up additional credits. He played the lead in Václav Havel play, The Memorandum, and graduated in 1991.

He completed the one-year course ‘The Journey’ at the Actors' Centre in Sydney and attended the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts of Edith Cowan University in Perth, from which he graduated in 1994.

Jackman got his first professional job in Correlli, an Australian television 10 -part series first broadcast by ABC TV in 1995. It starred Deborra-Lee Furness as prison psychologist Louisa Correlli.

Playing the leading role of Curly in the Royal National Theatre's acclaimed stage production of Oklahoma! in London's West End in 1998, he earned an Olivier Award nomination and recognition outside Australia.

In 2004, he won many accolades for his Broadway portrayal of Australian songwriter-performer Peter Allen in the hit musical, The Boy from Oz, and co-starred with Daniel Craig in the play A Steady Rain.

In 2005, the actor joined with longtime assistant John Palermo to form a production company, Seed Productions, aiming to mount modest-budget films to harness local talent in Jackman's home country.

He starred in the 2006 film ‘The Prestige’, directed by Christopher Nolan and co-starring Christian Bale, Michael Caine, and Scarlett Johansson. He portrayed Robert Angier, a magician’ trying to outclass a contemporary Alfred Borden.

In 1999, Jackman was cast as Wolverine in Bryan Singer's X-Men which grossed $296,339,527 worldwide. He reprised his role in X2: X-Men United, X-Men: The Last Stand, and the prequel X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

He starred as Leopold, a Victorian English duke who accidentally time-travels to 21st-century Manhattan, where he meets Kate (Meg Ryan), a cynical advertising executive, in the 2001 romantic comedy film, Kate & Leopold.