Hugh Jackman on his childhood chores

You know, I wonder, your father being an accountant, raising five children alone, there must have been some system of organization. Like, now I find it hard to believe how well organized it was. It was chores written up, we had chore sheets. So, five kids, five work days to the week. The weekends were a little different. So once a week your job would be the dishwasher. Once a week would be dinner, so you cooked dinner. Once a week would be the lunches. Once a week would be the washing. Monday nights would be the communal clearing of the clean washing on the table. Saturday mornings we had chores. Sundays was always Dad observed the Sabbath. So we had to go to Sunday school and then we had Sunday lunch. It was very, very organized. And from age eight I was doing my own washing, ironing my own clothes. I mean, I'm sure there's other kids who did it, but to me it was normal. To this day, if someone cooks for me, I automatically get up to clean. Because if you cook, you don't clean. If you clean, you don't cook. And it's all these things that I learned from my dad and it was just survival for him. You know, he had five kids and a full-time job. Everyone had to pitch in and do something. He had five kids, a full-time job, and he traveled. Yeah, he traveled. You know, thinking back for him, the travel must have been heaven. I mean, he must have gone on that plane going, oh, yes. And we would all go and stay at our family's. And I remember he would get a cardboard box because all of us used to eat a lot. Our Jackmans love eating. And so he would deliver us to the front door. And there would also be a cardboard box filled with breakfast cereals and milk and things like that. And we would go and stay for a week or two weeks. But I've got to tell you, man, people used to think, oh, how terrible. You know, you have to go off and stay at other people's houses. It was nirvana. It was unbelievable. Because, to be honest, most of the mothers where I stayed, say it was my friends or whatever, they all kind of intrinsically felt a little bit sorry for me because my mother had gone. And I got mothered like nobody got mothered. I would open up these lunch boxes and it was just like a buffet. There was a drink in there and there was a chocolate. There was a sweet. There was a savory. There was here. They would have the sandwich with the crust cut off. And it was like, I'd be like, dad, you're home already. You know, I'd get home and they would have cakes baked for me and they would look after me. They would make my bed. I would get up to do the washing up. They'd say, oh, no, Hugh, relax. You don't have to do that. It was like five star hotel.