Hugh Jackman was 8 when his mum walked out. It was years before he realised she wasn't coming back.

Hugh Jackman still remembers the day he returned home from school to find his mum gone.

He was eight years old at the time but he clearly remembers the towel his mother Grace had wrapped around her head when she said an unusual goodbye. Jackman didn't know what was happening, just that something was off.

When he returned from school later, it was to an empty house.

"The next day there was a telegram from England, Mum was there. And then that was it. Dad used to pray every night that Mum would come back," Jackman recalled in a December 2012 interview with 60 Minutes.

Grace didn't come back, and when his parents divorced, the family was split up even further. Jackman and his two brothers remained in Australia with their dad, while his two sisters moved back to England with their mum.

Watch: Hugh Jackman recounts an embarrassing story. Post continues below.

Jackman's parents Grace and Christopher migrated to Australia from England in 1967 and he was born a year later in 1968, the youngest of five siblings. They had emigrated to Australia in the 1960s as part of the 'Ten Pound Pom' scheme. Jackman would later say that his mum struggled with the distance from her family back in the UK.

"A lot of children grow up under difficult family circumstances and I don't feel sorry for myself for the fact that mine was exactly that," Jackman, now 55, told Great British Life in 2014.

"I stayed in Australia with my father and two brothers, and had a tough time for a while. But, you know, I had a very good father who was always there for us and I could never even imagine what it must have been like to raise kids on his own the way he did for many years. I don't think I could have done that. You need an iron will and I never heard him complain about himself or his lot in life."

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hugh Jackman (@thehughjackman)

In 2018, Jackman further spoke about the "trauma" of this time in an interview with Who magazine.

"It was traumatic. I thought she was probably going to come back. And then it sort of dragged on and on," he said.

After his mum left, she would visit the family once a year.

"It would be like a family holiday. I remember going to the beach. There was a chance of a reconciliation at that point but she never came back for good," he said, adding that it only dawned on him when he was 12 or 13 that she was not going to return.

It left Jackman struggling emotionally.

"I was volatile. My anger didn't really surface until I was 12 or 13," he told Parade. "It was triggered because my parents were going to get reconciled and didn't. All those years I'd been holding out hope that they would."

He continued: "From the moment mum left, I was a fearful kid who felt powerless. I used to be the first one home and I was frightened to go inside. I couldn't go into the house on my own. I'd wait outside, scared, frustrated."

Jackman and his mother have since patched up their relationship.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hugh Jackman (@thehughjackman)

Jackman's mother still lives in Norwich, England. His father Christopher passed away in September 2021, early in the morning on Father's Day.

Crediting his father's love, Jackman told The Guardian in 2023: "A lot of who I am today is because of him."

Jackman and his mother are regularly spotted together in Jackman's adopted home of New York City. He also often does Mother's Day posts on Instagram for her.

"The thing I never felt — and I know this might sound strange — I never felt that my mum didn't love me," Jackman told Us Weekly.

"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 postnatal depression. There wasn't a support network for her here."

Jackman has also opened up about deciding to get therapy related to what he experienced in childhood.

"Most importantly, it's helping me to be more relational with the people I love in my life, and really understanding and living in their shoes and being clear to be able to see them," Jackman told Who.

As he said to The Sun: "We have definitely made our peace, which is important. I have a good relationship with her."

This article was originally published in December 2022, and has since been updated with new information.

For help and support, contact PANDA (Perinatal Anxiety & Depression Australia) on 1300 726 306.

Feature Image: