“We undertake this next chapter with gratitude, love, and kindness.”
Celebrity split summer has struck again, and the latest power couple to come to an end is one we definitely didn’t see coming.
Hugh Jackman and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness have decided to call it quits after 27 years, sharing a statement with PEOPLE that says it’s the only public message either of them will be giving about the dissolution of their marriage.
Why are Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness breaking up?
“We have been blessed to share almost 3 decades together as husband and wife in a wonderful, loving marriage. Our journey now is shifting and we have decided to separate to pursue our individual growth,” the couple wrote. “Our family has been and always will be our highest priority. We undertake this next chapter with gratitude, love, and kindness. We greatly appreciate your understanding in respecting our privacy as our family navigates this transition in all of our lives.”
While the couple said they won’t be speaking about the split any further than this statement, the Daily Mail reported that the relationship has been strained ever since the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“They are forever linked, forever together with the children they have, but after the past few years, the love they had for each other turned more into a friendship which got broken during Covid, as the lockdown didn’t help their marriage at all and really put a strain on their relationship,” a source told the outlet.
But it wasn’t just the pandemic — the work stoppage in Hollywood that’s resulted from the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America being on strike also added tension to the mix. “The strikes haven’t helped one bit,” the source said. “It got them in the same predicament as Covid did, to where they were just kicking the tires, and Hugh found it all to not have the same magic as they once had.”
It’s always tough to gauge how much these “insiders” really know about a relationship they aren’t in themselves, but the Daily Mail did add that a representative for Jackman confirmed that Covid and the Hollywood strikes were factors in what went wrong between he and his wife.
How did Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness meet?
The couple first crossed paths while making the Australian TV series Corelli in 1995. Furness was the star of the show, playing a prison psychologist, and Jackman has spoken about the electricity of their first interaction.
“[It was] my first job out of drama school — it was a massive break for me. I was really scared,” Jackman said in 2017. “Deb, she was a big star. I get picked up, and Deb is in the front seat of the car. I’ll never forget. She took off her seatbelt and she turned around and put out her hand and took off her sunglasses and said, ‘Hi, I’m Deborra-Lee Furness, nice to meet you.’ I remember thinking, ‘I like this girl.'”
They soon became romantic partners offscreen, and they were married in Melbourne, Australia, in 1996. Furness said the couple had a special message inscribed on their wedding rings: “Om paramar to the mainamar,” which translates to “we dedicate our union to a greater source.”
The couple’s also gotten attention for their age gap: 13 years separate 67-year-old Furness and 54-year-old Jackman. But according to Jackman, the dynamic in their relationship was actually quite different than their ages might imply.
“I’m literally the adult in the relationship,” he said in 2017. “She’s just like a little kid. I’m the [one saying], ‘Babe, this is not a legal parking spot.’ [And she says], ‘Oh, come on, Mr. Goody-Goody.’”
Do Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness have children?
The couple shares two children, 23-year-old son Oscar and 18-year-old daughter Ava. Both of them were adopted, and the family has been open about their journey, telling PEOPLE in 2017 that they decided to pursue that path after dealing with miscarriages and obstacles with in vitro fertilization. And once they decided to adopt, they aimed to do so in the most impactful way possible.
“Our motivation behind adopting was, ‘Where is the need?'” Jackman said. “And we just knew from talking with people in that space, when we were looking around, that the biggest need is in mixed-race kids.”
Furness has spoken about the intentional efforts she and Jackman have made to honor their children’s “cultural differences.”
“When my son was younger, he found out he was part Bosnian, so we went and got this Croatian/Bosnian cookbook, and he was very proud to carry that around when he was 7 years old. My daughter has a Mexican lineage, so we’ve been to Mexico,” Furness said. “We completely embrace the ancestors and the extended family. They’re family to us.”
