ABC/Randy Holmes(LOS ANGELES) — Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness have been married for nearly 20 years, and his wife would like to keep it that way.
Although Furness, who met Jackman on the set of the Australian TV show Correlli, is used to seeing her hunky husband star opposite a beautiful woman, she told Australian television that there’s one actress he’s not allowed to work with.
“I’ve told his agent he’s not allowed to work with Angelina [Jolie],” she laughingly told Australia’s Today Show. “I’m sure she’s very nice and I love what she’s doing — shining a light on awareness for adoption…”
The 59-year-old actress trailed off before adding, “I’m just kidding.”
More serious, she said, “It just goes to show, if you get it right, if you pick the right partner then you traverse all those travails and challenges.”
That’s not to say that they don’t have certain rules in their marriage.
“Deb had a rule, never apart for more than two weeks,” Jackman, 46, told the interviewer. “Deb had been on enough sets to see the pitfalls. It was my first job when we met, I didn’t know anything else, but we’ve never been apart for more than two weeks. We’ve managed to keep that.”
Furness chimed in, “And we don’t wanna be [apart] — he tells really good jokes and I miss him.”
The couple also talked about their organization, Adopt Change, which is trying to make adoption easier in Australia — a subject they know firsthand as parents to adopted children Oscar, 14, and Ava, 9.
“What people don’t know is we were always going to adopt,” Furness said. “Yes, we did want to have a biological child, but it didn’t happen, so we just went to the adoption.”
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