Biography of Hugh Jackman

With countless blockbuster hits this year, the multi-talented actor Hugh Jackman has portrayed everything from the brooding Wolverine in X-Men 3, to an even darker, more mysterious role in The Prestige, to an animated penguin called "Memphis" in Happy Feet. In a few short years Hugh has made a name for himself that has taken other celebrities decades to accomplish, making this "Boy from Oz" a household name overnight.

Born in Sydney, Australia on October 12, 1968, Jackman was the youngest of five children. Graduating from the University of Technology in Sydney with a degree in communications, he went on to attend the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts to study drama full-time. Fulfilling the dream of every theatre student, upon graduating the Academy he was almost immediately offered a starring role on the Australian TV series Corelli. Consequently, this first job also introduced him to his future wife, Deborra-Lee Furness. The couple has suffered two miscarriages, and have adopted a son and daughter.

Jackman would go on to star in different musical productions, such as Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard (which earned him a Variety Club and Green Room Award for Best Actor) and Curly in the Royal National Theatre's Oklahoma, for which he was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award in 1998. Perhaps his best known role to Americans would be that of Peter Allen in The Boy from Oz, the role that made him famous and earned him a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical in 2004. He was also nominated by the Australian Film Institute in 1999 for a Best Actor award for his role of Wace in the drama Erskineville Kings.

When the producers of X-Men wet looking for a man to play Wolverine, they originally selected the actor Dougray Scott, but Jackman was asked to play the role when it was discovered that Scott would be held over in the filming of Mission Impossible 2. The film included other well-known celebrities such as Patrick Stewart, Halle Berry and Ian McKellen, and had a built-in fan base of the Marvel Universe, and both of these facts promised to make the movie a blockbuster hit. A short while later these predictions proved true and Hugh Jackman had made a name for himself with American audiences.

The second movie of the X-Men trilogy was released in 2003 with X2: X-Men United, a sequel that many have said nearly surpassed the first movie. X-Men 3: The Last Stand ended the movie series this year, but that hasn't stopped Hugh's successful career: he's also appeared in starring roles in The Prestige and The Fountain, and loaned his voice to animated characters in both Flushed Away and Happy Feet.

In a recent interview, Hugh lamented what he called a "culture of waste" in today's society surrounding celebrity-ism and the bloated cost of making a Hollywood film these days. According to Jackman, an individual flown in to the set of X-Men 3 was paid for the sole purpose of preparing "frozen coffee drinks" for the cast and crew. He has also started his own production company, called "Seed Productions", and will be making a spin-off movie to explore more of Wolverine's character.