Best Known As: Film Actor

Gist:  Hugh Michael Jackman (born 12 October 1968) is an Australian actor and producer who is involved in film, musical theatre and television. He has won international recognition for his roles in major films, notably as action/superhero, period and romance characters. He is well known from his role as Wolverine in the X-Men series, plus Kate & Leopold, Van Helsing, The Prestige, and Australia. Jackman is a singer, dancer and actor in stage musicals, and won a Tony Award for his role in The Boy from Oz.

In November 2008, Open Salon named Hugh Jackman one of its sexiest men living. Later that same month, People magazine named Jackman "Sexiest Man Alive."

A three-time host of the Tony Awards, Jackman hosted the 81st Academy Awards on February 22, 2009.

Jackman has been invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. If he accepts, he will be inducted in September 2009.

Life Facts:  Jackman was born in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, the youngest of five children of English parents Chris Jackman and Grace Watson, and the second of his siblings to be born in Australia. (He also has a younger half sister.) His mother left the family when he was eight years old, and he remained with his accountant father and siblings.

Jackman attended the all-boys Knox Grammar School, where he starred in its production of the musical My Fair Lady in 1985, and became the Captain of the School in 1986. Following graduation, he spent a gap year working at Uppingham School in England. On his return to Australia he studied at the University of Technology, Sydney, graduating in 1991 with a BA in Communications.

After obtaining his BA, Jackman went on in 1991 to complete the one year course "The Journey" at the Actors' Centre in Sydney.; can be viewed at

After completing the course he was offered a role on the popular soap opera Neighbours, but turned it down to attend the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts of Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia, from which he graduated in 1994.

In 2005, Jackman joined with longtime assistant John Palermo to form a production company, Seed Productions, whose first project was Viva Laughlin in 2007. Jackman's actress wife Deborra-Lee Furness is also involved in the company, and Palermo had three rings made with an inscription meaning "unity" for himself, Furness, and Jackman. About the trio's collaboration Jackman reports "I'm very lucky in the partners I work with in my life, Deb and John Palermo. It really works. We all have different strengths. I love it. It's very exciting."

The Fox-based Seed label has grown in size to include execs Amanda Schweitzer, Kathryn Tamblyn, Allan Mandelbaum and Joe Marino, with Alana Free operating the Sydney-based production office whose goal is to mount modest-budget films to harness local talent in Jackman's home country.

Jackman married Deborra-Lee Furness on April 11, 1996. They met on Correlli, an Australian television series. Furness had two miscarriages, after which she and Jackman adopted two children, Oscar Maximillian (born May 15, 2000) and Ava Eliot (born July 10, 2005). They currently live in Manhattan.

Jackman personally designed an engagement ring for Furness, and their wedding rings bore the Sanskrit inscription "Om paramar mainamar," translated as "we dedicate our union to a greater source."