The Actress Hugh Jackman Is Not 'Allowed to Work With'

Hugh Jackman's wife jokes that there is one actress he can't work with.

ByABC News
July 6, 2015, 4:15 PM
Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness attend the "Dukale's Dream" screening at SVA Theater in New York, June 4, 2015.
Hugh Jackman and Deborra-Lee Furness attend the "Dukale's Dream" screening at SVA Theater in New York, June 4, 2015.
Laura Cavanaugh/FilmMagic/Getty Images

— -- 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 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."