Hugh Jackman: Playboy Interview

At a time when Hollywood is trying to broaden the list of stars who can open big-budget films, 20th Century Fox is betting heavily on Hugh Jackman. He stars alongside Nicole Kidman in Australia, a Baz Luhrmann–directed film that is not only the biggest movie ever shot in Jackman’s native country but also the most ambitious period romance since Titanic.

Jackman plays a cattle driver pursuing a privileged widow who needs him to move cattle across the wide-open acreage of Australia’s north country. At stake is a ranch left to her after the abrupt death of her husband. Though steeped in Aussie history—from the disastrous World War I battles that decimated the country’s youth to the forced relocation of half-caste aboriginals to a Japanese attack in World War II—Australia is the type of old-fashioned epic studios rarely produce anymore.

Not that Jackman is any stranger to blockbusters. He returns in May with X-Men Origins: Wolverine as the growling, steel-taloned title character in a prequel that will be one of the summer’s major releases and, Jackman hopes, the start of a new franchise in which he calls the shots as producer.

Jackman is already the showbiz equivalent of the five-tool baseball player. He plays drama, comedy and action like Will Smith, George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio, and he has turned in a Tony Award-winning performance as the singing and dancing gay Australian showman Peter Allen, in The Boy From Oz. Though Jackman failed when he produced CBS’s musical TV series Viva Laughlin, he’s producing a remake of Carousel and will likely next star on Broadway in Houdini, a high-profile musical written by Spy magazine founder Kurt Andersen and scored by Danny Elfman, the Oingo Boingo frontman turned composer for Tim Burton films.

“Hugh is a true musical star on Broadway, but what Nicole needed was a real man tall enough to sweep her up in his arms, throw her on the bed and ravish her,” said Luhrmann. “I can’t think of another actor, ever, as versatile.”

The 40-year-old Sydney-born Jackman is the youngest of five children of Chris Jackman and Grace Watson. When Jackman was eight, his mother abruptly returned to England, leaving the children to be raised by their dad, an accountant for Price Waterhouse. A jock who studied journalism in college, Jackman didn’t realize his song-and-dance gifts until his 20s. He used $3,500 left to him in his grandmother’s will to enroll in the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth.

Jackman soon began working in local film and TV roles. Cast as a tough prisoner in the Aussie TV series Correlli, Jackman fell for his on-screen love interest, Deborra-Lee Furness. They married in 1996 and have adopted two children, Oscar and Ava.

Jackman became a major player at the age of 30 with his first Hollywood role, Wolverine in X-Men. When X-Men became one of the first superhero films to reach blockbuster status, Jackman followed with two sequels and starring roles in Swordfish, Kate & Leopold, Van Helsing, The Fountain and The Prestige.

Playboy sent Michael Fleming, who most recently interviewed Matthew McConaughey, to catch up with Jackman. Fleming reports, “Over thick steaks in a favorite Jackman haunt that overlooks surfers hanging 10 at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, Jackman revealed himself to be a terrific storyteller, as accommodating as people say he is on movie sets. Locals claim Jackman is already the most popular homegrown movie star, but if Australia and Wolverine score, he’s positioned to become something Hollywood finds in short supply: a real leading man.”