After Hugh and Deb got hitched, their life turned into one big rollercoaster ride, but the pace of change didn’t alter their attitude towards each other. If anything it made them stronger. In fact Hugh said it was ten times better than any single life he could have conjured up for himself. ‘To me it was a no-brainer that we should be together. She is the first person in my life I feel 100 per cent comfortable with. If I’ve done something or feel something that I’m ashamed of doing or feeling, I can tell her and there’s no judgment.’
Deborra-Lee, on the other hand, being a free spirit and an only child, had to quickly learn to adapt to having a live-in relationship with Hugh who had been one of five children. ‘You have to navigate together and see where you both side on everything, from politics to religion to child-rearing. In a relationship, you’re standing there, stark naked, going, “Here you go, warts and all”, and you’re showing the person you care about and respect the most all your goods, bads and uglies.’
They were savvy enough to realise that if their relationship was to survive in the bizarre world of show business, where celebrity marriages often crash head first and burst into flames at the first bend, they needed to protect and respect each other. ‘She’d seen so many relationships go awry, particularly on location when people were away for months on end,’ Hugh explained. ‘Absence doesn’t necessarily make the heart grow fonder; it makes it wander.’ They decided to make a pact never to spend more than two weeks apart, which became the backbone of their relationship. Even though they have worked worlds apart, they have never broken that promise.
They use the short times they are apart to spice up their romance. ‘My wife loves the idea of me coming home in costume because it makes her feel like she’s having an affair, but in a good way. When we met, I was cast as a prisoner with tattoos and she’d say, “Don’t take your tattoos off tonight!” and I’d be like, “All right!”’ However, Hugh admits it is his stockbroker look and his sexy dance moves that Deb secretly loves the most.
And over the years, he has had lots of opportunities to dress up for Deborra-Lee as his own career went from strength to strength, while she on the other hand suddenly became known in many quarters as ‘The Wife’. It was a hard lesson for her at first. She explained, ‘I was an actress and all of a sudden, I’m Mrs Jackman. And when I’d go to the bank, the bank manager would talk to Hugh, and I’m like, “Hello! What is this? Is this the 1950s?” There’d be moments like that, when it was like I had a new costume, a new character, a role I was playing, so I had to navigate around how that felt.’
According to Deborra-Lee, there was certainly a change of attitude towards her from the press and fans almost immediately after the wedding. She had always been seen as a kick-arse heroine, but all that changed after she said ‘I do’. ‘When Hugh and I got together the alchemy changed, and I got the wrath. There was a time I felt this rush of negative energy and I thought, what happened? I was a chick’s chick and I was, like, the popular kid at school, and all of a sudden there were nasty comments in the magazines being made at me, that I was older than Hugh and playing the role of not working, and being married, and wanting a family.’
The way she was treated at times, by certain people, hurt them both, but it was especially hard on Deb. When they first went to Hollywood, people would rudely ignore her. She’d call it the ‘chopped liver syndrome’ – she would literally be knocked out of the way by women clamouring for her husband’s attention.
Halle Berry, who starred with Hugh in several films, saw this first-hand: ‘Hugh is sexy beyond belief. Waves of women were always coming on to him while we were shooting and poor Hugh would always just politely turn them down.’
Hugh continues to maintain that his wife has nothing to worry about at all; he is well aware that all the attention has nothing to do with him and everything to do with his status in Hollywood, and credits his relationship with Deb as keeping his feet firmly on the ground and keeping him humble. On one occasion, when he was leaving for the opening night performance of Sunset Boulevard, he turned and told his wife he was off. She said, ‘Oh, don’t forget to take out the garbage.’
Hugh loves the honesty and humour that Deb puts into everything she does, and although she can be brutal at times, he wouldn’t have it any other way. Over the years, Hugh has worked with many beautiful women and he always insists on taking the actresses out for dinner with his wife. ‘Invariably, they always like Deb more than me and quite often say, “Your wife is amazing. She’s so interesting, a lot more interesting than you.” Every person I’ve ever worked with has ended up liking Deb more than they like me. I remember working with Meg Ryan on Kate & Leopold and it was our wedding anniversary. Deb and I planned on going to the Rainbow Room but I had to work. So Meg took Deb out for our anniversary instead.’
Deborra-Lee is quite clearly secure in their relationship, and is confident in what they have together. She accepts all the attention Hugh gets in public and no longer minds as long as he gives her all of his attention when they are alone at home. He often talks about her being the rock in his life, the one giving him the encouragement and support when he needs it most. It was his wife who was the first person he looked for when in 2009 he walked out on stage to present the Oscars, and he was so pleased when she gave him a little nod: ‘I knew I could completely die on my ass there. One mistake and the entire film industry could fall out of love with me, or whatever, and everything could fall apart. But when you know there’s a rock there, that goes a long way, particularly in this business.’
He came clean later when he said that he was lucky she had actually stayed awake during the ceremony. Apparently Deborra-Lee has a habit of falling asleep at the drop of a hat – especially when she goes to see Hugh’s films. ‘She’s fallen asleep during every movie I’ve ever done. At one première, this big-time producer, who is known for growling, growled down the row to me, “Wake your wife up, Jackman!”’
The only thing that ever caused Hugh any concern whatsoever about their marriage was when his father uncovered something that he feared would prove there might be an incestuous relationship between himself and Deb. When three of his five children decided to attempt a career on the stage, Hugh’s father decided to research his family to see if there was an acting connection among his ancestors. But the investigation dug up a familial problem, which prompted Hugh to beg his dad not to pry further.
Hugh said, ‘He found out that two of his great aunts were on the stage in Britain and their maiden name was Furness. My wife’s name is Furness as well, and it’s a particularly weird spelling of the name. We discovered her ancestors from two generations back were also from the north of England. I started thinking, “My wife is my sister, maybe cousin at best,” but we thought, “We’ve consummated the marriage, what the hell!”’
Even though it turned out to be a bit of a red herring, it proved to be a great after-dinner story when entertaining guests.
‘I believe that we do have, you know, soul mates or partners in this life and when I met Hugh there was just a click and it wasn’t, you know, love at first sight, like the second I looked at him and it was just I knew. There was a knowingness and he sort of felt like he got me and it was, he was cute, but it wasn’t just about that; it was there was something that just gelled… and I looked at him then and thought this man will be in my life as a friend, and then it developed into something else.’
Deborra-Lee Furness
CHAPTER FIVE
Jackman Goes Mutant
It was October 1999 in Toronto, Canada, and filming had already started on a new big-screen movie based on the cult Marvel comic books, X-Men. It promised an all-star cast, an original storyline and spectacular special effects. Everything was in place – the equipment, the crew, the backdrops, the make-up artists, and the main cast. Well, almost all of the main cast. There was one major issue: the man pencilled in to play the reluctant mutant hero, Wolverine, was missing in action.
Dougray Scott, the Scottish
actor who cut his teeth in the cult British movie Twin Town before moving on to Hollywood, had been selected to play the role. But he was still in New Zealand filming Mission Impossible 2, which was running several months behind schedule. This left the movers and shakers at Twentieth Century Fox with a massive headache since Wolverine, the comic strip’s shaggy, steel-clawed mutant character, was at the centre of its story.
Director Bryan Singer, who had directed critical favourites such as The Usual Suspects (1995) and Apt Pupil (1998), waited for his original choice of leading man for as long as he could. At one stage there was a glimmer of hope that Scott would be released early from the filming of M:I-2 by rival studio Paramount to take his place as Wolverine. When that hope soon disappeared, it became obvious that they needed a new actor urgently or the production would run into serious problems. But who could play the pivotal role and, just as importantly, would they be available at such short notice?
Singer himself had initially turned down the opportunity to direct the X-Men blockbuster twice, but changed his mind after reading most of the old comics and watching all 70 episodes of the X-Men animated series. Since its 1963 debut as a Marvel Comic, the X-Men had amassed a huge amount of devoted followers and according to Marvel, the series was the most popular comic-book franchise of all time. Like Superman and Batman, two other characters that had leapt from pulp pages and onto the big screen, it was only a matter of time until the mutants came to life onscreen, too. The underlying storyline concerned a band of unique-power possessing mutants living on earth, where they were hated and persecuted by humans. Under the guidance of their leader, Professor Charles Xavier, the X-Men strived for a world where humans and mutants could peacefully co-exist, battling with the radical mutants (Brotherhood of Mutants), who wanted to exterminate the human race.
Singer and producer Tom DeSanto sent an outline of the film to Fox which had a very serious theme, apparently comparing the conflict between the two leaders in the story, Xavier and Magneto, to the power struggle between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Fox liked it and put up a budget of around $60 million for the project.
Bryan Singer started casting the film back in the spring of 1999 and he had already put together a strong and headlining team of actors. He approached Patrick Stewart to play Professor Xavier, a telepathic mutant confined to a wheelchair, who ran a school for gifted mutant kids. Stewart, already renowned for his Star Trek work, was hesitant about playing yet another fearless leader, but once he read the script and realised it was a modern movie with a serious theme, he happily accepted the role. Next was Halle Berry, cast to portray Storm, a mutant who could manipulate the weather. Anna Paquin’s Rogue character absorbed the power of anyone she touched and Famke Janssen was cast to play a telepathic Jean Grey.
Of course, any action flick worth its special-effects wizardry has to have a worthy villain and X-Men had Sir Ian McKellen to play Magneto, one of the most powerful mutants around. His sidekicks included the eerily creepy Ray Park as Mortimer Toynbee/Toad, a very agile fighter with a menacing streak and a long, prehensile tongue. Sabretooth would be played by wrestler Tyler Mane and the shape-shifting Mystique by Rebecca Romijn-Stamos.
However, for Singer, time was fast running out for him to get a replacement for Scott, so the director spent days trawling through the list of other possible candidates who had gone through a set of rigorous interviews, some 10 months prior. Hugh Jackman’s name was near the top of the pile marked as strong candidates, which was ironic considering it was an interview that he almost didn’t go through with in the first place. Not being a comic-book fan himself, he had never even heard of the X-Men or the hugely popular character, Wolverine. In fact, he thought the audition was for a movie about an Australian pop band of the 1980s called the Uncanny X-Men! And his wife, who had accidentally glanced at the pages of the script, wasn’t at all impressed.
‘I got four pages of the script,’ recalled Hugh. ‘I think almost every actor my age in the world got those same four pages. And it started off with…it said, “The mutant Wolverine’s claws come out of his hands,” and then it had the stage direction “Shook!” with an exclamation mark. “S-H-O-O-K!”
‘Deb got no further than that and said, “Put it down! You’re not doing this. It’s ridiculous. There you are at the National Theatre working with Trevor Nunn and you’re gonna go play a mutant with claws that go “Shook”?’
Hugh didn’t know what to think but decided to audition anyway, which caused quite a stir when he turned up with his outrageously unfashionable hairstyle. ‘I was doing the musical in London at the time, playing Curly in Oklahoma!, so I had a perm in my hair. I put a hat on to do the audition and about halfway through the casting director was like, “That was great, could you do one without the hat? I can’t really see Wolverine wearing a baseball cap.”’ So Hugh took off the hat and started to read the lines when she jumped in again after two lines and shouted, ‘Cut, put the hat on now and can you do it less like a cowboy!’ Hugh hadn’t been able to help but speak with a bit of the American accent that he had picked up from playing Curly every night for the past few months.
Nonetheless, even with the bad hair day and the fake accent, he must have impressed someone because they planned to fly him to New York on Concorde to meet up with Bryan Singer and do a final test. They even arranged to have him sign a contract upfront in case he got the job. Unfortunately, it all fell through when the makers were told Scott, who was their original choice anyway, had agreed to do the movie straight after Mission Impossible 2.
Slightly upset, but as always philosophical about life, Hugh said that if he was honest with himself he was more disappointed that he didn’t get to travel on Concorde than the fact that he didn’t get the job. And, of course, Deb was over the moon that she didn’t have to watch him in a film in which his claws ‘shook’. Hugh moved on and finished the stage show in London and later returned home to Australia where he was named Australian Star of 1999 at the Australian Movie Convention, before he headed off to the States for more important business.
So, with Hugh Jackman now popping up towards the top of the possible candidates list, Bryan Singer wondered if the Australian actor was still available, and whether he would still be interested after they had overlooked him in the first place.
Hugh was in LA at the time and about to start adoption proceedings for his son, Oscar. The call, 10 months after the original audition, came as quite a surprise. ‘Dougray Scott was doing M:I-2 and it was going over, and X-Men had already started four days earlier. I was asked if I was interested in a second audition. I think I must be in the record books for the longest times between auditions in history. It was like 10 months.’
This time, he didn’t hesitate. There was something about the role that felt right to him. He packed up and headed to Canada, only to be stopped by officials because he didn’t have a work visa: ‘What I did have was a printed sheet with my lines from the script on them. So basically, I’m begging them, “Look, man, I’m having a meeting with the director of X-Men.”’
The border guard was unimpressed. He yawned and asked Hugh if he was one of the animators. Hugh informed him that he was possibly going to be Wolverine. All of a sudden, the customs guy started screaming out to his colleagues, ‘It’s Wolverine!’ Minutes later, Hugh was signing autographs, before he even got his paws on the job.
However, he blew Bryan Singer away in the second audition, landing the role of the mutant and having his steel claws fitted the very next day. It was official: he was now Wolverine, the feral, hot-headed mutant with a steel skeleton frame, razor claws and mutant lamb chop sideburns.
He still didn’t appreciate just how big a deal it really was until he walked into the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) office in LA with Deb to sign the contract and have a glass of champagne with his agent. The whole CAA staff stood up and started yelling down the hallway at him, ‘Go, Wolverine, go!’
Deb, who still couldn’t picture her husband donning claws and an Elv
is hairstyle, muttered, ‘I think this is bigger than we ever expected. This is huge.’ Later she joked that telling him not to take the role was the one time in her life she had been wrong.
After a short celebration and just enough time to purchase a plane ticket, Hugh was back in Toronto with a suitcase full of sandals and shorts in temperatures of minus one. He was thrown into hair and make-up tests, moulds were made of his hands, and his body quickly transformed into the Wolverine character.
One thing Jackman wasn’t quite prepared for was the backlash from the hardened comic-book fans who were not only stunned, but extremely vitriolic in their displeasure at the fact that this unknown actor from Down Under, who was better known for prancing about on the stage, was about to step into the angry boots of Wolverine. They voiced their outrage in letters and emails posted to Marvel and Twentieth Century Fox complaining about their choice. ‘But luckily, no one really knew anything else about me, so the jury was out until they saw the movie. After that I think they were happy. I’m sure I would have heard if they weren’t,’ Hugh remarked.
One of the main complaints from X-Men fans about Hugh was the small fact of his size. At 6ft 3in tall, Hugh was an entire foot taller than the comic book hero Wolverine. To get over the size difference the filmmakers were frequently forced to shoot him from unusual angles or only from the waist up. On occasion, Jackman would open his legs wider than usual to make him appear shorter than he actually was.
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