Hugh Jackman's Painful Past

Back when he wasn’t “Wolverine”, actor Hugh Jackman dealt with a blow that would change his life forever. He was just an eight-year-old boy living a normal life in Sydney’s northern beaches with his two brothers and two sisters when something tragic happened.

Hugh’s mother, Grace, decided to leave the country and move back to the UK. She sent a telegram to them the very next day. Sadly, only at the age of 12/13 Jackman realized that his mother was never coming back.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, he had to deal with the repercussions that followed after. Yup. Hugh Jackman confessed that he was tormented by the way people were behaving towards him differently, all because his mother left him:

One of the main things I remember is that horrible feeling that people were talking about you and looking at you because it was odd for the mother to leave. The thing I never felt, and I know this might sound strange, I never felt that my mom didn’t love me. I’ve spoken about it at length with her since and I know she was struggling. She was in hospital after I was born suffering from post-natal depression. There wasn’t a support network for her here. There comes a certain point in life when you have to stop blaming other people for how you feel or the misfortunes in your life. You can’t go through life obsessing about what might have been.
ADVERTISEMENT

Although her absence damaged him, he knows that his mother never stopped loving him. In fact, Hugh Jackman is now happily married to Deborra-lee Furness and a proud father of two. He said that it was only after he became a father that he finally understood the pressure his mother was under.