She was one half of Australia's most beloved couple: Deborra-lee Furness' life and career in pictures
She was one half of Australia's most beloved couple for decades but before Deborra-lee Furness married Hugh Jackman, she was a TV star in her own right.
The Aussie actress enjoyed a solid career before pivoting into activism, and it seemed like she had the perfect life and marriage until she and Jackman shocked the world by announcing their split.
Keep reading to relive every moment that led to that announcement and see what Furness has achieved since.
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Born in Annandale on November 30, 1955, Furness was raised in Melbourne and always dreamed of acting.
After finishing high school, her mother urged her to get some sort of training that she could fall back on if acting didn't work out, so Furness trained as a secretary and landed a job as an assistant at Channel Nine.
Reporting to news director John Sorrell, it turned out to be a great first job as it helped her land a gig as a researcher and later an on-air reporter for No Man's Land, a daytime news program produced by an all-women team.
Though she enjoyed the role, Furness longed to act and eventually moved to New York to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After graduating, she returned to Australia and started her TV career with a series of small roles, like this appearance on Neighbours.
Furness landed her breakout role in the 1988 film Shame, where she played a barrister on a solo motorcycle trip through Australia who comes upon a town where young men have been routinely harassing and assaulting young women.
Her character stands up to the rampant sexism and rape culture in the small town, determined to defend the young women who have been vicitimised and bring the perpetrators to justice.
Furness' performance earned her a Film Critics Circle of Australia Award and a Golden Space Needle Award, and opened plenty of doors for her in Australia's entertainment industry.
Furness had starred in a few stage and TV productions before filming Shame, but it was the project that really made her a star in Australia.
Over the next five years she appeared in TV mini-series like Fields of Fire II and Act of Betrayal, as well as movies like Angel Baby and Newsies. But it was a crime drama series called Correlli that had the biggest impact on Furness' personal life.
After all, she met her husband of almost 30 years on the set of that TV show.
Furness played prison psychologist Louisa Correlli, who takes a job at an an all-male prison and forms a romantic connection with hardened criminal Kevin Jones - played by none other than Hugh Jackman.
Jackman was in his mid-20s and fresh out of drama school and Furness was an established star 13 years his senior, but it didn't stop the pair's on-screen romance from bleeding into the real world.
Recalling the first time they met in a 2017 interview, Jackman said: "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.'"
Despite the obvious attraction between them, Jackman was hesitant to ask Furness out.
"She was the star. I had this major crush on her. Everyone did. The whole crew had a crush on her. And I was so embarrassed by it, I didn't talk to her for a week," Jackman confessed during a 2016 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
It took him six long weeks of working together every day for him to finally pluck up the courage to ask Furness on a date.
"Deb and I were already best friends, and I realised, 'I've got a crush on my leading lady'. This is the thing you do not do. It's unprofessional and embarrassing," Jackman told People years later.
He finally confessed his feelings during a dinner party, where he asked Furness to help him with the dessert then admitted how he felt.
"I said, '[I've] got a crush on you. I'll get over it; I'm sorry.' She goes, 'Oh? Because I've got a crush on you too.'"
Jackman proposed just four months into their relationship, despite the fact Furness "kind of" broke up with him early into the piece.
An established actress with plenty of experience in the industry, Furness was wary of dating actors - especially actors under 30, as Jackman was at the time. But their romance was solid and she quickly came around, agreeing to marry her former co-star.
Furness and Jackman tied the knot on April 11, 1996, at St John's Anglican Church in Toorak, Victoria.
Furness went all-out with her bridal look, styling her blonde hair on top of her head and rocking a statement pearl choker on the big day.
Not one to give up on her dreams of a family, Furness was adamant she would become a mother even if it meant pursuing a less common path to parenthood.
In 2000, she and Jackman adopted their first child together, a boy named Oscar Maximilian Jackman.
The couple were closely involved with his biological mother in the leadup to Oscar's birth, bringing her to their Los Angeles home and welcoming her into their family during her pregnancy.
"Here is this woman going to give me the greatest gift of my life, and I want to look after her," Furness said of the decision in 2004.
Their family grew again in 2005, when she and Jackman adopted their daughter Ava Eliot Jackman.
In 2006, she returned to screens for the first time in six years in the film Jindabyne, which she followed up with one or two projects a year for the next few years.
While Jackman's star continued to rise, Furness focused on their young family and giving her children as normal an upbringing as possible for the kids of two prolific actors.
She also started speaking up about adoption and the plight of orphans and displaced children around the world, hoping to use her platform to improve adoption laws in Australia and shift some of the social narratives around adoption.
It helped that she had other famous faces cheering her on, including the likes of Nicole Kidman, who shares two adopted children with her ex husband Tom Cruise.
Furness really turned her focus to activism in the 2010s, largely stepping away from acting and producing to promote issues that meant a lot to her.
She pushed for action to end poverty, campaigned for better adoption laws around the world, co-created National Adoption Awareness Week in Australia, became a patron for the Lighthouse Foundation, served on the Advisory Committee for Film Aid International, and even became an ambassador for World Vision.
Husband Jackman supported her in all these endeavours, often appearing alongside her to lend his own star power to the causes Furness was so passionate about.
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