As the one-year reign of Hugh Jackman as PEOPLE’s Sexiest Man Alive winds down, it’s time to pass the crown to a new deserving hunk. So who does the Australian screen star, Oscar host and current Broadway leading man want to see take the title next?

“Me! I want to be the first to have it back to back, buddy,” Jackman, 41, told PEOPLE’s reporter on Friday in New York, while attending the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Concert (set to air on HBO Nov. 29). “That would be fantastic!”

Though he would like to reclaim the title, the Steady Rain star (who costars in the Broadway drama with Daniel Craig, certainly another SMA possibility) says it’s been quite an exciting year as the Sexiest Man Alive, but also one that’s been a little demanding. (more…)

A Steady Rain stars Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig have thrown down the fundraising gauntlet with their curtain speech plea to help raise funds for Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights AIDS.

On Oct. 23, A Steady Rain’s first day of fundraising for the upcoming BC/EFA Gypsy of the Year event, Jackman began, “Well, congratulations. We got through the entire show without one cell phone going off!” The duo then proceeded to auction off (and sign) the t-shirts they wore during the show for $5,000 each. They also took 20 pictures with audience members for $1,000 each. Those items, added to the sale of signed posters and Playbills as well as standard bucket collections, totaled $38,900 for the night — an all-time, one-night record.

The figure bested the previous one-night fundraising record – held by Jackman himself during his run in The Boy from Oz – by over $5000.
Source: Playbill.com

Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman’s star turn on Broadway is smashing box-office records. The Hollywood actors’ play A Steady Rain has broken box-office records and last week grossed more than $1 million.

The glitz of Hollywood celebrity has rubbed off on ticket sales and given Broadway one of its best autumn seasons in recent years. Second to A Steady Rain is God Of Carnage, starring Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden.

And American celebrities are not the only stars boosting Broadway’s profits – British actor Jude Law’s appearance in Hamlet raked in $904,914 in ticket sales alone last week.

“These three current plays are doing absolutely sensational business, especially considering that the economy hasn’t fully recovered,” said the chairman of Broadway’s Shubert Organization, Philip J. Smith.
“They’ve been a huge factor in this unusually healthy [autumn] for recession-era Broadway. If only all shows were doing so well.”

We guess the saying is till true that when people are enduring hard times, they’ll take any dsitraction they can get.
Source: Splash News

What a sweet pair! Hugh Jackman was spotted walking with his adorable 4-year-old daughter Ava in New York City on Friday (October 23). It looked like Hugh was saying to Ava, “you make my heart sing,” as the animated father-daughter duo walked home from school. It also looked like they were having some serious giggles along their travels. How cute!

The 41-year-old Wolverine star and his wife, Deborra-Lee Furness are also parents to 9-year-old son, Oscar.

GALLERY LINKS:
• Candids from 2009 – 10-23 – Walking Ava home from school [HQ]

Bryan Singer said today that he’s in talks with Twentieth Century Fox to direct another movie in the X-Men franchise, according to an Associated Press story published on the San Francisco Chronicle’s website. “I’m still looking to possibly returning to the X-Men franchise,” Singer said during a talk at South Korea’s Pusan International Film Festival. “I’ve been talking to Fox about it.”

The director made both the original X-Men and its sequel X2: X-Men United but skipped the third installment, X-Men: The Last Stand, so he could focus on Superman Returns. Brett Ratner instead directed Last Stand, and Gavin Hood helmed the franchise’s spin-off, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which hit theaters earlier this year. Added Singer: “I love Hugh Jackman. I love the cast [of the X-Men movies].”
Source: Entertainment Weekly

Twilight star Rob is set to star in Unbound Captives with the X Men Origins: Wolverine star and revealed they bonded by seeing who could perform the best renditions of classic tracks by Abba.

Robert said: “We met up in Japan and we went karaoke singing. We were singing Abba songs, it was pretty funny. It was sort of an Abba song sing-off, you know, last man standing.

“I think he won, only because he can drink more than me and still sing in tune. He’s a cool guy and I’m really looking forward to that film.”

Robert has previously shown his musical side by recording songs for the Twilight soundtrack and despite also featuring in the music for sequel Twilight Saga: New Moon says he felt like “a t****r” when the movie came out. (more…)

Actor Hugh Jackman plays around with daughter Ava Eliot at a local playground before meeting up with wife Deborra-Lee Furness in the West Village.

GALLERY LINKS:
• Candids from 2009 – 10-08 – At a playground in the West Village [HQ]

CBS News’ Katie Couric sat down with Hugh Jackman and the two discussed the spontaneity of live theater and Hugh’s “cell phone incident.” Read on for details…

Hugh tells Katie about a recent performance of his Broadway show, “A Steady Rain,” during which an audience member’s cell phone rang twice.

The hunky actor and former People magazine pick for “Sexiest Man Alive” broke the proverbial “fourth wall” while in character to ask the audience member if he or she planned to answer.

“And then it stopped, and just as I was about to start, it started ringing again…It’s karma,” Hugh says with a laugh, saying his wife is notorious for leaving her cell phone on during shows.

Aussie actor Hugh Jackman has toppled Brad Pitt as the star most men wish to look like. According to a leading Hollywood surgeon, 40-year-old Jackman, who regularly tops sexiest male polls and was named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive last year, has now become popular with men.

“Hugh Jackman just passed Brad Pitt in my list of what men ask for. They say, Doc, can I have a gut ripped like his? Doc, can I have a nose like his?” Contactmusic quoted doctor Robert Rey, the star of reality TV show Dr. 90210, as saying.

“Australians have really made a huge impact on the world, especially in Hollywood, with their standard of beauty,” he added.
Source: OneIndia

Few words strike more fear into my theatergoer’s heart than these two: star vehicle. Usually they mean either that some old warhorse has been revived merely to service the career needs of a Hollywood ego, or that a flimsy new construction has been trundled onstage just to see how much of the scenery can be chewed up. A Steady Rain,a new Broadway play by Keith Huff starring Hugh Jackman and Daniel (James Bond) Craig, raises another warning flag the minute the lights go up. The two actors are the only people on stage, talking directly to the audience, and the play is little more than a pair of interwoven monologues.

Yet A Steady Rain turns out to be better than I had any right to expect — better, in fact, than any new American play on Broadway since August Osage County.Its two stars, an Australian and a Brit playing a pair of Chicago cops, are startlingly good: magnetic, commanding the stage (neither is a theater neophyte) yet totally absorbed in their characters, enhancing the play rather than bending it to their will. (Read “What’s New on Broadway”)

Jackman has the flashier role: shirtsleeves rolled up, dark hair slicked back, he’s a brash, bullying but well-meaning family man, who has become an expert at justifying the moral compromises demanded by the urban jungle where he works. (more…)