Hugh Jackman talks about his hard childhood

The 46-year-old actor opens up about his mother leaving him when he was 8 years old after his parents got divorced – and the impact that had on his childhood – in a candid interview with Parade. “I was volatile. My mum left when I was eight”.

Not just anger, Jackman also had an intense fear, he says, ” I was the youngest amongst my four siblings and the first one to return home after school.

Asked what he’s learned this year, he said previously: “That’s a good question, but I can’t officially tell you any of those things because that would be wrong, and she would be upset that I told anyone what I’ve learned”. “I’d be somewhere in a ruck in rugby, get punched in the face and I’d just go into a white rage”. “From the moment Mum left, I was a fearful kid who felt powerless”, he continued. I was scared of heights. There, he finds unbelievable adventures and fights life-or-death battles while trying to uncover the secret of his mother, who left him at the orphanage so long ago, and his rightful place in this magical land. “And they have this fame and paparazzi that I didn’t have to encounter because no one was interested in my father”, he acknowledges. Isn’t most anger fear-based, ultimately? “I was really feeling that”.

Hugh Jackman takes on Peter Pan as Captain Blackbeard on the big screen this year, but he has admitted he feels a special bond with the boy who never grew up.

“I used to go to different evangelists’ [revival] tents all the time. When I was about 13, I had a weird premonition that I was going to be onstage, like the preachers I saw”. Jackman and his wife, Deborra-Lee Furness, have two children together – Oscar, 15, Ava, 10. “And it feels natural”, he said. Far from allowing him to channel his emotions, it caused them to blow up, as he would get angry whenever someone touched him. “I was really feeling that”.

Ahead of its U.S. release next week, a new global trailer has debuted for Joe Wright’s Peter Pan live-action origin story Pan which stars Hugh Jackman, Levi Miller, Rooney Mara and Garrett Hedlund. “At a certain point I was like, ‘Deb, let’s adopt now, ‘” Jackman said. “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have done the film”.