Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman (Image: Handout)
Hugh Jackman is set to be the main attraction at next week's Brit Awards after his turn in The Greatest Showman - but it's still his wife rather than award bigwigs he wants to impress. For while he might be a Hollywood heavyweight, Jackman has revealed he still auditions for all his roles in front of his wife Deborra Lee-Furness. In fact, Jackman might not have been The Greatest Showman if it wasn't for her pushing him to do his other Hollywood musical role in 2011's Les Misérables.
The Greatest Showman (Image: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corpor
)
The actor admits he nearly pulled out of the Oscar-winning film three weeks before the shoot but it was Debora who persuaded him to do it.
"I always go over auditions with my wife, he says. "About three weeks before, it felt so huge: huge story, huge characters, huge archetypes, huge figures and I had doubts about whether I could pull it off.
"It was my wife that pulled me off that cliff. She said it was good that I had doubt as Jean Valjean would have doubt and you need humility to do that part, 'So get over it!'"
Had Jackman not taken on that role, he may not have swapped his Wolverine claws for the part of PT Barnum in The Greatest Showman.
Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale (Image: Universal Studios)
The 2017 movie has now taken on cult status, with the DVD still topping the charts over New Year more than a year since the film came out, and the soundtrack becoming the biggest-selling album of last year, eclipsing all Top 40 artists.
Jackman, 50, met actress/producer Deborra, 63, on the set of Australian TV show Correlli in 1995, and they married a year later.
But she soon became friends with another important woman in his life - fellow Australian A-lister Nicole Kidman.
Speaking on Bafta: Life In Pictures, to be shown on Sky Arts tonight, Hugh said: "It was Nicole Kidman who
