Hugh Jackman gets behind Humpty Dumpty children's charity

Not for nothing is Australian actor Hugh Jackman considered one of the nicest and most decent blokes in the entertainment industry.

The Sydney born and bred father of two, who has been married to the equally fabulous Deborra-Lee Furness for the past 14 years, has thrown his weight behind a Sydney children’s charity to celebrate the 10^th annual Balmoral Burn fun run.

In a coup for the Humpty Dumpty Foundation (which puts kids back together again) Jackman has offered the chance for two people to spend a day on the set of his next film, Real Steel, in a bid to raise money at the charity’s upcoming fund-raising event.

Jackman decided to support the  charity’s Balmoral Burn when he discovered that the community fun run – which is the brainchild of Wallaby rugby legend Phil Kearns – was turning 10 years old.

It’s a world-first for the charity and founder and chairman Paul Francis, OAM, couldn’t be happier or more proud. “He’s a bloke from Sydney’s north shore and a father of two beautiful children. What could be a more perfect fit than that? After all, the north shore is where Humpty’s story began, and children are what the charity is all about.”

The Burn has so far raised more than $8 million, which has been spent on buying more than 600 pieces of medical equipment used to save the lives of thousands of sick and injured children across Australia and in East Timor.

Jackman’s once-in-a-lifetime auction package will take two people behind-the-scenes of a Hollywood film and give them the opportunity to hang out on the set and meet the actor who has been voted the “sexiest man alive” by celebrity magazine, People.

Hugh's the sexiest, says People magazine

Having spent time with Jackman on the set of Baz Luhrmann’s epic Australia, I know what fun it will be. Jackman is an absolute champ, a decent bloke with zero airs and graces. What you see is what  you get.

Real Steel is a futuristic action/drama and will be shot in Michigan during the northern hemisphere summer.

Co-starring Lost’s Kevin Durand, it will be produced by Academy Award winning director Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, and directed by Shawn Levy, who helmed the successful box office the Night At The Museum series, The Pink Panther, Big Fat Liar and Date Night.

The Jackman auction package will be up for auction at the Balmoral Burn Sponsor’s Dinner on Friday 28 May. Bids can be made by phone on the night through prior arrangement with Humpty.

The proceeds of the package will help Humpty buy more medical equipment for children’s hospitals. For more information call +61 2 9439 0511 or go to Humpty’s website.

Critically acclaimed writer and actor Brendan Cowell photographed by Rodger Cummins for The Age newspaper

Crticially acclaimed Australian actor Brendan Cowell sure is a busy man. Currently starring in two Australian films – the brilliant Beneath Hill 60 and I Love You Too – he is also working on the final draft of his first novel.

Cowell, back in Australia for the premiere of I Love You Too in Sydney tonight, is racing against the clock to finish the book, which he told me recently was a dark, coming of age story about male friendship.

“Or, a little bit of a love letter to my upbringing in Cronulla,” he said, adding that for the last few months he was “basically being a writer guy” in Los Angeles where he is presently based.

Cowell scored an advance for the unfinished manuscript on the back of his other prolific and successful career as a writer, which includes eight plays (Rabbit and Bed have both won awards), a critically acclaimed television series (Love My Way) and a movie (Ten Empty).

“I got a publishing deal a couple of years ago and I’ve been climbing the enormous mountain since,” he told me during an interview for a story I wrote recently for sunday magazine on his I Love You Too co-star Yvonne Strahovski.

Yvonne Strahovski, the Sydney-born co-star of I Love You Too

BTW: the charming Aussie rom-com is the brainchild of former Rove sidekick, Pete Helliar, who also stars in the flick with American actor Peter Dinklage (remember him from the brilliant Death at a Funeral?) It is a lovely story and a great first effort by Helliar with good performances by the lead actors.

But back to Cowell and his writing, which he says began as a youngster when he developed a love of books.

“I read a novel every week and I’m obsessed with books and I always have been. I was brought up with books and my mother was really into literature and I’ve always read and I’ve always seen it as the highest literary form, and the use of language.”

The 34-year-old actor hopes to have the book published at the end of the year by Pan Macmillan.

“The notes that I got [back from the editor after the first draft] were actually longer than the novel itself,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I’m battling away.”

Meanwhile, Cowell will be back in Sydney later in the year to star in a Sydney Theatre Company production of the Sam Shepard play, True West.

Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman, who has already helmed one play for the prestigious company and acted in the same play on Broadway, will direct the piece co-starring Cowell and Wayne Blair.

Russell Crowe - to star in A Star Is Born?

It’s true. Russell Crowe has been approached to star in the remake of A Star is Born with multi-Grammy winner Beyonce.

“Having a casual chat about it; nothing definite,” Crowe told me in a email on Friday. “Very casual conversation at producer Billy Gerber’s request.”

The Los Angeles Times reported this week that Warners Bros resurrected the project after Beyonce restated her interest in the movie the studio previously released in 1976. The ’70s version starred Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.

Beyonce to star in the remake of A Star is (re)Born

Gerber produced the 2008 gritty drama Gran Torino, which starred Clint Eastwood as a disgruntled war veteran intent on cleaning up his neighbourhood.

Crowe, a three-time Best Actor nominee at the Academy Awards and one-time Oscar winner, is currently in Sydney between films. He recently completed the thriller, The Next Three Days, a remake of the 2008 French film Pour Elle. Crowe plays a husband who breaks his wife out of jail after she has been sentenced for a murder she didn’t commit in the film directed by Paul Haggis.

But before that hits the big screen, fans can see Crowe as a broody, rugged Robin Hood in the as-yet untitled film that re-teamed him with director Ridley Scott, who directed Crowe to a Best Actor Oscar in the brilliant Gladiator. Hood is due to be released in May.

Russell Crowe as Robin Hood

The remake of Star would be a perfect fit for Beyonce, who hasn’t exactly set the world on fire in her previous cinematic outings. The natural born singer, who picked up several awards at the 2010 Grammys, has reportedly been interested in the film for some time.

In the film, a movie star (possibly Crowe if talks with Gerber result in him signing on the dotted line) helps a young singer/actress find fame, even as age and alcoholism start to disrupt his own career.

Meanwhile, in other news from the Crowe household, the actor’s wife Danielle Spencer’s second album, Calling All Magicians will be released within days and is already garnering great press in the United Kingdom as well as Australia.

Her producer Tony Visconti (he’s worked with Bowie and Morrissey) said he got on board with the petite performer after hearing her voice. “This is the best album I’ve worked on in years,” he told reporters. Her first single, Just a Thought, is “too beautiful for words,” he said.

Now that’s a compliment.

Joel Edgerton and Cate Blanchett in the New York production of A Streetcar Named Desire (picture Sara Krulwich, The New York Times)

Sydney actor Joel Edgerton is on fire – and so is Cate Blanchett, but we already knew that.

The New York Times theatre critic Ben Brantley has just anointed him for his “excellent” performance alongside massively praised Cate Blanchett in the Tennessee Williams epic, A Streetcar Named Desire.

(The play was universally applauded by critics, including John McCallum in The Australian, when it premiered at The Sydney Theatre Company in September).

And his next film, Animal Kingdom, is the only Australian movie chosen to screen at the prestigious 2010 Sundance Film Festival where it will make its world premiere.

Only 14 films were selected for the “world cinema narrative competition” from a staggering 1022 entries.

Not bad going, and great kudos for the Australian film industry.

Animal Kingdom was written and directed by David Michod and filmed on location in Melbourne during a tight seven-week shoot earlier this year. It stars a string of exceptional Australian actors including Melbourne-based Guy Pearce, Ben Mendelsohn and the indefatigable Jacki Weaver.

According to a report by InsideFilm.com.au earlier this year, Animal Kingdom is a “taut thriller set amid the explosive world of a family addicted to crime, as experienced through the eyes of a naïve 17-year-old youth who enters their lair. It’s the Wild West where criminals and police wage their war on the city’s streets, while the innocent suffer the consequences.”

Animal Kingdom film poster

With Edgerton and Pearce (he plays a cop) in the same film, it will be cheekbones at 10-paces.

Edgerton’s career has been on the rise in recent years (even Blanchett forgave him for throwing a prop-telephone at her during a Streetcar performance at the STC recently) and Brantley’s glowing review of his Stanley Kowalksi (originally shaped by the great – in every sense – and late Marlon Brando) has got to be among the highlights.

“Mr Edgerton brings out the childlike side of Stanley, both its simple joyousness and thoughtlessness, and it has rarely been clearer that Stella’s husband has the winning strength of youth,” Brantley wrote.

Aden Young, one of the stars of Bruce Beresford's new epic, Mao's Last Dancer. Picture by Marco del Grande @ The Sydney Morning Herald

The incredibly talented Aden Young, one of this country’s most under-utilised and under-rated actors, was on the red carpet last night at the Australian premiere of Mao’s Last Dancer.

The 37-year-old Canadian-born Sydney transplant has a small but strong role in the Bruce Beresford epic based on the best-selling autobiography of the same name by Chinese ballet dancer Li Cunxin, who defected to the United States in 1981, and is played by another incredible dancer Chi Cao in the film.

Young was worried that his characterisation of the Texan oil tycoon Dilworth – who helped Cunxin defect – was “too big”.

It’s not. Young recently told me it was the first time he had played a real life character in his two-decade long career that includes 30 films not to mention work behind-the-scenes.

“The great bonus of being involved in something like this is being face to face with Li and meeting him and being able to, I guess, come face to face with somebody of such exquisite talent,” Young told me.

I met Young at the 1991 Toronto Film Festival when he made his feature film debut in another Beresford epic, Black Robe. Back then, Young was touted as “the next big thing” but he determinedly took a low-key route and by-passed Hollywood where he was dubbed “Dr No” because he turned down roles that didn’t appeal to him.

He admitted the decision had taken a financial toll.

But after his partner of seven-year, Loene Carmen, fell pregnant with their son Dutch – who is now almost three years old – he threw himself back into the picture, so to speak.

Mao’s Last Dancer - which I loved  - is the third film in which he has teamed up with Beresford.

“What I like about him [Beresford] is that his irreverence to the craft is married to such a wealth of cinematic language. He knows what he wants and allows you to find it. I am always quite amazed,” Young says of working on the $25 million film with the director. “He [says] essentially ‘what would you do?’ and you might suggest a particular range of objectives and actions and he’ll say, ‘can it fit within this physical structure?’ and away you go.

“There’s not an extraordinary lot of discussion, at least there wasn’t from my point of view. Whereas with other directors you really nut [the role] down to every single word and syllable. What I love about acting is how every single project is completely different. You meet a first time director who is absolutely assured it’s going to work this way, whereas you’ve worked in five different processes where it’s never worked that way and then you’re amazed that it does work that way because he’s coming at it from a different perspective.”

Young is about to embark on another Australian-made film, Beneath Hill 60 and has just finished working with Charlotte Gainsborough in Queensland on a film helmed by Julie Bertucelli (Since Otar Left).

Stars of Mao's Last Dancer Chi Cao and Amanda Schull at Australian premiere in Sydney. Picture by Gay Gerard/Getty Images AsiaPac

Also at the premiere were fellow actors Jack Thompson (who also has a small role as a judge in the film), Michael Caton (The Castle), and a chorus line of ballet stars including the debonair artistic director of the Australian Ballet David McAllister and Graham Murphy. Sarah Murdoch was a towering presence, The Today show co-host Karl Stefanovic worked the mezzanine with aplomb, Ros Packer was spied chatting to friends, and John and Caroline Laws held court. Other guests included magazine maven and Australian Women’s Weekly heavyweight Deborah Thomas and her husband, Vitek, former sports reporter Mary-Anne Dibbs (who now looks after media and communications for the luxury resort Pinctada at Cable Beach in Western Australia), Sydney businesswoman Glenn-Marie Frost, and Jane Fraser, one of the smartest columnists at The Australian.

Sarah Murdoch at auditions for 2009 reality show, Australia's Next Top Model

The TV career of Sarah Murdoch has gone from strength to strength since she made her grown-up debut as co-host of Channel Nine’s Today show over the summer holidays in 2007.

And now with the success of Australia’s Next Top Model tucked under her fashionable belt, the willowy blonde is branching out again.

Murdoch (she dropped the O’Hare a couple of years ago, but still several after she and media scion Lachlan Murdoch) has spent the past couple of months travelling around Australia filming interviews with ordinary Australians who have done extraordinary things.

The ever-popular 37-year model talked briefly about her new project while launching Battlelines written by Federal Liberal Party hard man, Tony Abbott, in Sydney on Tuesday.

She previously inked a deal with Foxtel, which produces Top Model, to make documentaries with her production company, Room 306 (named after the number of the hospital room where she gave birth to her two sons).

Murdoch, who recently finished filming the series, said she had interviewed a courageous fireman and a teenaged girl who took control of a runaway bus to save the schoolkids travelling on it, not to mention herself (that’s the teenager, not Mrs Murdoch).

The four-part doco-series will go to air on Foxtel’s Bio channel in October, and is linked with the News Ltd Pride of Australia awards.

Another piece of news from Abbott’s book launch came from Melbourne University Press boss, Louise Adler.

Contrary to popular belief that MUP is a left-leaning publishing house, they have published three books about or by Liberal Party politicians in the past two years (John Winston Howard, The Biography, The Costello Memoirs, and Battlelines) and will publish former Liberal Party Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser’s bio in 2010.

Wonder if he’ll have a Trousergate chapter?

“Melbourne University Press hopes to dispel the myth that books about Liberals don’t sell,” Adler told the crowd. Not for nothing is MUP’s motto, “books with spine“.

Russell Crowe on set of Robin Hood in Wales (picture by PA)

TWO-time Oscar winner Russell Crowe has injured himself on the set of his latest film when a stunt “went slightly wrong”.

The 45-year-old actor, who is known for doing his own stunts and throwing himself into his roles, badly bruised his heels last Thursday after jumping from a port cullis (I’ll explain that in a minute) in an action scene in Robin Hood.

The mishap occurred during a scene in which his character and cohorts had a French castle under siege. “As you do!” Crowe told me in an email overnight.

Even though he’s been in a “a great deal of pain”, the injury has not affected filming and Crowe – who spent the weekend with his family in London and managed to limp around the hallowed ground at Lords for the latest Ashes series – will be back on set for more action and adventure this week.

“I start another fight scene Tuesday. Hoping things will have settled down by then,” he wrote.

Crowe is starring as Robin Hood in the film being helmed by his good mate, Ridley Scott, who directed Crowe to his first Academy Award for best actor in the brilliant Gladiator in 2001. It is the fifth film on which they have worked together, the last being the 2008 Body of Lies co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Crowe’s Maid Marian is Cate Blanchett.

It’s not the first time the Kiwi-born star has been hurt while making a movie: he suffered a shoulder injury while filming the Ron Howard-directed Cinderella Man in 2004.

And what exactly is a port cullis? It’s an iron or wooden grate that protects the entrances to medieval castles and forts, preventing invasion by raiders and pillagers.

Robin Hood is due to be released in 2010.

Robert Redford and second wife Sibylle Szaggars

Iconic actor Robert Redford broke the mould on the weekend and did what few men of his advanced years, elevated status and deep pockets do – he married a woman in her 50s.

Shock, horror! Finally, an actor acting his age. Redford, who is 72, tied the knot with his girlfriend of 13 years, Sibylle Szaggars in a luxury hotel in Hamburg, and depending on which report you read, the bride is either 19 or 20 years younger than the man who broke hearts as Hubbell Gardner in the romantic epic, The Way We Were with Barbra Streisand in 1973 and won an Oscar for Best Director for Ordinary People in 1980.

And proving what an old-fashioned fellow he really is, Szaggars and Redford had been engaged since May last year.

Sure, a generation divides Redford and Szaggars but at least he hasn’t embarrassed himself by marrying a gold-digging careerist doubling as a nymphette 40, 50 or 60 years his junior. The artist Szaggars is in his age ballpark – well, at least on the periphery. And they look chronologically matched, with the march of years etched on both their faces, albeit his with deeper crevasses.

The age debate is a tricky one: there are those who say that age doesn’t matter and it’s usually a seriously younger woman who bangs on about how intelligent and fascinating her seriously older partner is – they rarely mention the mountains of money he has, or the toys or the access to power. Interestingly, the older men more often than not remain silent on the subject or dismiss it out of hand when –  indeed, if – asked. Why should they bother explaining themselves? After all, they know the aphrodisiacal nature of money, fame and power.

Then there are the cynics who look at the match and go, hmmmm.

The not-so-curious thing about it, though, is that men can get away with being decades older than their wives and it doesn’t matter how big the age gap. They’re cradle snatchers, wink, wink. Give the old codger a pat on the back. And yes, there may be some science and biology involved – but how much and what age gap is OK?

Not surprisingly, a glaring double standard exists when women partner/marry/shack up with significantly younger men. They’ve even been branded with an unflattering nickname, cougars, as if they are predatory beasts, and movies and magazines have been devoted to them, casting them as subjects of ridicule and/or fascination.

Demi Moore and husband Ashton Kutcher

Me? I think there’s a bit more dignity in the older woman with a younger man than, say, Anna Nicole Smith with the late octogenarian and billionaire J. Howard Marshall, who was a sprightly (not) 89 when they tied to the knot, or Hugh Heffner with one of his many cookie-cutter blondes.

After all, the relationship is based on more than the obvious superficial attractions of power and money. Just think Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Mariah Carey, Demi Moore, Cher, Cameron Diaz, Mira Sorvino and, if you cast your minds waaaaaay back, Linda Evans.

I know who I’d rather see. A cougar not a codger.

Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in Australia

You’ve got to pity Academy Award winning actress Nicole Kidman. The 42-year-old actress has a permanent target on her chest and the latest to take aim is influential Hollywood reporter Nikki Finke.

In her must-read DeadlineHollywoodDaily website, Finke has attacked Kidman for daring to change her American publicist after a professional relationship that lasted 15 years.

Hang on, isn’t that Kidman’s prerogative? After all, things change, we move on. It’s called life. And besides, she is still with her Australian publicist Wendy Day, who has been at her side through thick and thin for more than two decades, proving Kidman is more than loyal.

But her decision to change PR agent has upset Finke, who calls Kidman “box office poison” and says she “has zero charisma on screen; women don’t like her and men think she’s sexless”.

Previously, other critics agreed. Recall how she unfairly copped a caning for her last film, the super-hyped Baz Luhrmann, Australia. Melanie Reid in The Times newspaper in London was scathing about her performance and said the director had made a “big, big mistake” in casting the lanky redhead.

“Kidman is exquisitely accomplished at being awful. She can’t act,” Reid wrote. Meow!

Even though others were less cruel – a Los Angeles Times reporter said she was not a movie star – you get the picture.

Kidman arouses the critics, but is she really box office poison?

Australia might have earned mixed reviews but it still managed to pull in US$211 million at the international box office – which is not too shabby (that figure does not include important DVD sales.) Another critical dud, The Golden Compass also did good business – so she’s got to be doing something right.

Yes, Kidman has been in some shockers – The Invasion, anyone? – but I’m curious why she evokes such a strong, usually negative, reactions from so many people.

I’ve met her and interviewed her a couple of times, the last being on the set of Australia in outback Kununurra. I’m no apologist for her, and I’m not on her payroll, and I’ve been critical of the hype surrounding her and her ex-husband Tom Cruise in the past, but she’s pleasant, she’s sweet, she’s professional, she’s inoffensive and she genuinely wants to do a good job.

It’s hard to muster up the fiercely negative feelings for her that Finke and others have. Folk might not instantly warm to Kidman, but she’s not an effusive Labrador puppy bouncing around looking for instant friends. She’s a woman who admits to being painfully shy, as do most actors. And there is no denying her  talent – just look at the brilliant performance in To Die For. Not every film is a winner and that’s true of all actors, even the incomparable Meryl Streep (Death Becomes Her) and Johnny Depp (the recently panned Public Enemies).

Still, for someone who is supposedly box office poison, Forbes magazine rated Kidman the eighth top earning actress in Hollywood last year with $15.7 million in income – that’s in Australian dollars.

If that’s box office poison, I’d happily drink from the cup.

The new righteous brothers - Nick, Joe and the newly engaged Kevin Jonas (r). pix Viacom International Inc

Is teen heartthrob Kevin Jonas getting ready to ditch the purity ring he’s been brandishing for the past few years after popping the question to his girlfriend, Danielle Deleasa, on the weekend?

At 22, Kevin is the oldest of the Jonas Brothers, all of whom wear the rings as a public statement about their decision to remain virgins until they marry.

I met the three Jonas boys in New York last year and went to the world premiere of their Disney Channel movie Camp Rock, a music filled extravaganza that was viewed by millions and millions (and then some) which confirmed their status as the world’s hottest teen stars.

Curiously, though, when asked about the purity rings, youngest brother Nick, clammed up. Defiantly.

“We are here to talk about Camp Rock today and we choose not to talk about that,’’ he said, taking control of the interview as brother Joe and Kevin looked straight ahead. Why not talk about the issue? After all, they are proudly devout Christians – their father Kevin Sr was a minister in the Assembly of God church in New Jersey before the boys hit the big time – and had long made a public show of their chastity with the bands on their ring fingers. Furthermore, the JoBros website quoted Joe Jonas saying he wears the ring as “a promise to myself and God to say pure until marriage”.

Absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, in these days of rampant celebrity exhibitionism when the It Girls are bad girls and bad boys are considered cool, it’s refreshing to see that some people – celebs especially – are not afraid to wear their morality on their sleeve. So far, it seems to be working for them.

Kevin, Joe and Nick Jonas remain among the few stars who haven’t been plagued by scandals and tawdry kiss and tell sagas, and their clean-cut image has helped make them multi-media multi-millionaires.

But back to Nick, who hadn’t yet turned 16. Even though there is no first among equals among the JoBros, and sibling rivalry seems to be non-existent, he appeared to be the leader of the pack during our interview for Australia’s sunday magazine. Joe said as much: “I would definitely say Nick is the leader type who I think will be the president one day”. Understandable, when you consider Nick was the first of the boys to get into the entertainment business, having made his Broadway debut, aged eight, playing Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol: The Musical.

Meanwhile, congrats to Kevin – there’ll be millions of hearts breaking across the world tonight, to borrow a memorable line from Top Gun.

And for those of you who want to catch my footage of the JoBros on the red carpet at the world premiere of Camp Rock, see below – and listen for the dish on Nick Jonas’s romantic ways with the girls!