Hugh Jackman's Reading List

"This is the autobiography of a man I admire tremendously. He was an economics professor in Bangladesh during the 1970s famine, and he felt sick to his stomach that he was teaching economic theories while passing dead bodies in the street. So he dismantled his curriculum and encouraged his students to go out with him to the poorer districts to understand what kept people impoverished. He eventually loaned $27 from his own pocket to 42 stool makers. He told banking officials that if you take so..."

"I was living in London when this novel was published. Reading it was like being able to fly home. I had just spent three years studying acting in Perth, and I knew the areas Winton writes about—the smells, the lights, the type of people. It was one of the most evocative Australian books I’ve ever read. Two families, who are complete opposites, share a ramshackle house. The Lambs are a more industrious sort of family. The Pickles—they’re a gambling family. The characters are flawed; they suffe..."

"This was another book I read when I was in London doing the musical Oklahoma! with Trevor Nunn, who loves to think of everything in naturalistic terms. Oklahoma! is set about 20 years before The Grapes of Wrath . It shows American farm life before the Dust Bowl, and The Grapes of Wrath , obviously, is what came next. I was mesmerized by Tom Joad. He’s living a very egocentric life at the beginning of the novel, but along his family’s arduous trip to California, he is transformed into someone..."

"This story of Mandela’s life is incredibly engrossing. As he recounts those 27 years in prison on Robben Island, what struck me is how someone can go through all this and maintain a sense of peace and equanimity even toward the people who put him there. One passage in the last chapter shocked me: ‘My commitment to my people, to the millions of South Africans I would never know or meet, was at the expense of the people I knew best and loved most.’ Despite all the great things he did, he’s awar..."