‘We all need a village’: Hugh Jackman reveals how therapy changed his life

Hugh Jackman has spoken out about his mental health, with the actor revealing how therapy helped him through his childhood trauma.

The 54-year-old noted that therapy has helped him through some of his past experiences during a recent interview with Australian publication Who magazine. He also said it allowed him to manage unresolved trauma related to his mother, Grace McNeil, who left him when he was a child and moved to England.

“I just started it recently. It helped me a lot,” he said, via Today. “We all need a village.” Jackman added that it was helpful talking to “someone really smart, who’s a little bit removed from your world”.

The magazine also reported that therapy has helped him change the way in which he treats the people that he loves.

“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,” The Great Showman star said.

Jackman’s parents divorced when he was eight years old. Following the separation, his two sisters moved to the UK to live with McNeil. Meanwhile Jackman and his brothers stayed with his father Christopher in Sydney, Australia.

In 2018, the actor did another interview with Who magazine to reflect on the experience and shared the fear he had about McNeil not returning to Sydney.

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

The 52-year-old said he saw his mother approximately “once a year” following her departure, before realising at age 12 or 13 that she would never return properly.

During a 2012 interview with Australia’s 60 Minutes show, Jackman confessed that he still remembers “the morning [McNeil] left” in vivid detail.

“I remember her being in a towel around her head and saying goodbye. [It] must have been the way she said goodbye,” he said, at the time. “The next day there was a telegram from England. Mum was there. And that was it. Dad used to pray every night that mum would come back.”

A year prior to that interview, Jackman revealed to The Sun that he had forgiven his mother for leaving, explaining: “I am 43 now and we have definitely made our peace, which is important.”

The Wolverine star shared a rare photo of himself and McNeil on Instagram earlier this year. In the picture, he could be smiling with his arm wrapped around his mother, as the caption reads: “Mum.”