The charmer

In director Baz Luhrmann's new rollicking epic, "Australia," Hugh Jackman is the Drover, a cowboy more comfortable on a horse than in society. The swaggering rebel with a heart of gold is first seen on screen starting a bar fight over a snub of his friend, an aboriginal man. It's as if Rhett Butler were back but fighting for the North this time.
That same dashing energy is evident in the actor. There are the obvious charms, of course: the green eyes, easy smile, the chiseled muscles on a 6-foot-2 frame. But it's the combination of strength and sensitivity that makes the 40-year-old actor truly endearing. Sitting in a genteel Beverly Hills hotel suite, he tells wild, careening stories about riding with a pack of stampeding horses and then talks with emotion about a film that hopes to aid in healing an old wound in his country.

Then there's his devotion to his family. When he and his wife, actress Deborra-Lee Furness, started dating, they agreed to never spend more than two weeks apart. Twelve years and two kids later, they've honored their pact. That just ups the dreamboat quotient.

With all that, his earnest humility is a welcome trait, and a natural byproduct of his upbringing Down Under. Jackman had just landed in Los Angeles when People magazine named him its Sexiest Man Alive; he says his inbox was immediately filled with mocking notes from his friends back home. One left a message ranting, "This is worse than the Florida 2000 recount. This is rigged. Give it back!" It's hard to get a big head after that.

In fact, teasing almost stunted his career before it began. Acting had been a fun hobby as a child, but when he was 12 years old, a teacher told him he was a good dancer and that he should train seriously. One of his brothers taunted him, saying he'd be a sissy if he took dance classes. "So I didn't go," he says. Six years later, his father took the boys to see the musical "42nd Street." At intermission, his brother apologized for being such a jerk years before. "He said, 'Hugh, you should be up there doing that stuff,' " Jackman recalls. "It made me tear up at the time -- it was a beautiful thing to say -- and I actually went straightaway and did dance classes from then."

They've come in handy. Jackman has had an impressive stage career, winning acclaim for performances in musicals such as "Carousel," "Oklahoma!" and "Sunset Boulevard." Fabulous in gold lame, he won a 2004 Tony Award for his role as Peter Allen in "The Boy From Oz."