It’s not often you see Wolverine star Hugh Jackman’s softer side, but the 44-year-old broke down when talking about his father this week.
The focus of the interview with America’s 60 Minutes was Hugh’s new role in Les Miserables, but the Aussie actor couldn’t help but praise the man who raised him single-handedly.
“My father is a rock. My father is my rock. It’s where I learned everything about loyalty, dependability, being there day in, day out, no matter what,” he says in the interview.
The life lessons Chris Jackman taught his son are something Hugh and his wife Deborra-lee Furness practise in their own family. The couple are never apart for more than two weeks, and when Hugh shoots in a foreign location, he takes his family with him.
“It’s always about the family. It’s always, ‘How’s Deb?’ It’s not about work,” he says of the conversations he often has with his father.
“And I think that’s him living with probably some of his regrets. And feelings of maybe he, at the wrong time, put too much in his career.
“He doesn’t want me to make me that mistake. In his gentle way, he always reminds me this is the most important thing.”
Hugh, who is the youngest of five, also shares the very vivid memory of the day his mother left and explains the important role his dad has played in his life from that day onwards.
“I can remember the morning she left, it’s weird the things you pick up. I remember her being in a towel around her head and saying goodbye… must have been the way she said goodbye,” he reveals.
“I went off to school, when I came back, there was no-one there in the house. The next day there was a telegram from England, Mom was there. And then that was it.”
