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Wolverine's Foxy LadyWhat's it like being married to the hottest man on Broadway? Deborra-Lee Furness opens up about life with Hugh Jackman, crazy fans and her other great love—family.
It was 1994, and Mick Jagger had just rolled into Melbourne. Deborra-Lee Furness' friends were urging her to join the rocker's party, but the Australian actress had other plans.
"I'm having dinner with Hugh Jackman," she told them.
"Hugh who?" they replied.
That was 17 years ago, a century in showbiz terms, before X-Men and Wolverine and light-years from Broadway's The Boy from Oz, in which Jackman's pitch-perfect take on the late Peter Allen sparked rumors about which team he bats for.
Surely no one is saying "Hugh who?" when they hear about this season's hottest ticket: Hugh Jackman, Back on Broadway, now igniting the kind of frenzy that once greeted Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. Then again, no one threw a pair of furry handcuffs at the girl from Oz, as someone did at Jackman's show during a run in San Francisco last spring.
Standing in the eye of this storm is Furness, Jackman's wife of 15 years. By all accounts—from their friends,their hairdresser,the people who work with them for the children's relief organization World Vision and other charities—she's his best friend and soul mate.
Try telling that to his fans.
"I've been almost pummeled as people try to get to him," says Furness, a quick-witted 56-year-old with a ready smile. "Literally, they will push you out of the way." To which she's tempted to say, "Hi, I'm chopped liver. How do you do?"
A long-legged champagne blonde with short, unlacquered fingernails ("I bite 'em!"), Furness was a star before her husband was, leaving Melbourne at 18 to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York ("People used to tell me, 'You really picked up the language fast!' and I'd say, 'We speak English there!' ") before returning to Australia to make movies. These days she tries hard to fly under the radar, inasmuch as that's possible when you're married to the Sexiest Man Alive.
She sighs at the mentionof it.
It's almost like another persona: the Movie Star," she says. "Mind you, I do think he's the sexiest man alive, and I'd hope every woman would think her husband was."
She lets out a low, dirty chuckle. "I was always saying I'd marry somebody sensible, like a stockbroker. So he dresses up for that fantasy for me occasionally."
We're still trying to reconcile the Wolverine/stockbroker image when she neatly brings the subject back to her other passion: adoption, and the plight of the world's children. It's the reason she's talking to us now, in the spare, cool confines of the Rubin Museum of Art, a favorite haunt of the couple and their children, Oscar, 11, and Ava, 6.
"They're really focused on their children," says Dr. Jane Aronson, a children's advocate who met the couple seven years ago and has since teamed with them on charitable projects. "She doesn't think of herself as a celebrity, and neither does he. They're lovely together."
The couple met in 1991 on the set of the Aussie TV show Correlli. Furness played a prison psychologist; Jackman was one of the inmates she counseled.
It wasn't love at first sight, she says, but there was "an instant rapport, a recognition." When he was gone from the set, she found herselfdisappointed.
Never mind that her New Year's resolutions that year included no more dating actors—and, for that matter, no more men under 30. Jackman, 13 years her junior, was 26 at the time.
"Famous last words!" she laughs, shaking her head.
She took him home to dinner, where her mom looked askance at his tattoos and bad haircut—he was playing a prisoner, after all. Without being asked, Jackman did the dishes.
"Marry him!" her mother demanded.
And that she did.
"It was early on for me when I knew she was the one," says Jackman, who gives Furness frequent shout-outs in his Broadway show. "I want to say two weeks into dating. But I decided to wait six months before asking Deb to marry me.
"After about four months I realized six months was a stupid rule, so I asked her. I never knew anything with as much surety as knowing Deb was the one."
They knew they wanted kids, and several miscarriages didn't change their minds. "Hugh and I were always going to adopt," she says. "We were going to have one [child], adopt another. When we didn't have one, we adopted two." So difficult was the process in Australia, with its history of abducted aboriginal children ("it's the A-word there," she says, a frown crossing her sunny features) that they adopted here, where the family has a home in the West Village.
And as the Wolverine cubs grow up, they're learning the P-word: paparazzi.
"I know them like the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker," Furness says nonchalantly. "They're actually very nice guys. I say to the kids, 'There's the trees, there's the paparazzi.' It's just part of their world."
The cameras are the least of it. Crazed fans—Furness calls them "Hughophiles"—are something else. That she's neither Kate Moss thin nor Trophy Wife young has led to catty comments around the globe.
"The age thing!" she cries. "Truth be known, Hugh is much more mature than me, so we balance each other out. And heaven forbid I have a human experience and carry a little weight.
"I resent magazines that say they write for women and all they do is ridicule women. They've got a close-up of a star's cellulite and it's like, 'Oh, happy day!' "
Nor is it pleasant to hear strangers discuss their love life or the rumors that he's gay.
The line I heard was, 'Wolverine? Who would have thought?' " sherecalls dryly. "Hugh and I don't pay much heed. It's kind of tragic that these people have nothing better to do than gossip about people they don't know."
Those wondering where Furness was on Nov. 10, the night Hugh Jackman, Back on Broadway opened in New York, can rest easy: She was across the world, prodding Australia's leaders to make adoption as easy there as it is here.
"I can't bear to think of a child not being cared for," she says. "I tell my own children it was their destiny to come to us."
She's not the disciplinarian. That role, she says, goes to Jackman. Seems the star of Real Steel is really steely.
"My kids need it," she says, with a laugh. "I'm thrilled he's so strict. We have a son about to go through puberty. Kids need boundaries, and I'm a softie."
And there's no one harder on Hugh Jackman, she says, than Hugh Jackman, who really didn't know how to sing or dance until he had to do both in the mid '90s, when he played shows like Sunset Boulevard and Beauty and the Beast in Melbourne.
"He trains hard," she says. "If he has to tap dance, he learns to tap dance. If he has to ride a horse, he rides a horse." He's also a good cook, she adds.
Is there anything he can't do?
She has to think about that one.
"He's not handy around the house," she concedes. "I have the tool belt."
A small price to pay for being married to New York's favorite song-and-dance man, who'll be wooing crowds here until January 1.
"I took the kids to the show Sunday, and everybody we saw looked so happy," she says, her voice growing warm with the memory. "He said to me the other day he's thrilled they pay him to do this. And I think people pick up on that. They feel his joy."
Clearly, so does she.
