He’s been declared the Sexiest Man Alive, but we see him more as Father of the Decade. The chiselled and toned in-demand actor is a devoted, hands-on dad who says his kids have helped him to get over his own unhappy childhood.
Hugh Jackman clearly recalls how he felt at age 10 – the age his son Oscar is now – when his mother abandoned him and his four siblings, leaving his father, Chris, to rely on others to raise the kids while he travelled for work.
“It was very unusual for the mother to leave, and I remember knowing people were looking at me differently,” Hugh recalls of this dark period in his life. “I wished I came from a normal family. I hated feeling that we were the weird ones on the block.
“My mother was not well,” reveals Hugh, who has since reconciled with her. “She was probably suffering post-partum depression. It may not have been diagnosed … but she was going through a tough time. I spent the first 18 months with my godparents.”
Hugh’s mother, Grace, came back home when he was 12 to try to patch up her marriage, but it didn’t work, and one morning Hugh and his siblings awoke to find her gone again.
“Out of the blue. There was no warning. There was just a letter saying she’d gone back to England,” he says. “I was very angry.” Today, as Hugh plays with his own children, son Oscar, 10, and daughter Ava, 5, the tough memories of his own upbringing have been replaced by the pure joy of giving them the childhood he was denied.
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