ABC/Ida Mae Astute(NEW YORK) — Hugh Jackman is plenty proud of his new charitable company, Laughing Man Coffee. The X-Men film franchise star had some famous inspiration for his venture, which was itself inspired by a trip to Ethiopia with the charity group WorldVision.
Jackman worked shoulder-to-shoulder with a farmer named Dukale. “I made a promise to him …that I would do whatever I could to get his story out and to help him,” Jackman tells ABC News.
It didn’t take the self-described coffee addict long to get the ball rolling.
“I was on the plane reading Paul Newman’s book about how he started Newman’s Own,” says Jackman. “And so, by the time I came back, I rang my mate Barry, who had been in the coffee business for 30 years, and I said, ‘Dude, I got an idea: Let’s start a non for profit company around coffee that will give back to the growers.’ And that was the beginning of Laughing Man.”
Regarding the Oscar-nominee’s day job, he’s still blown away by the sleeper success of his musical The Greatest Showman. When the movie opened, Jackman reveals “There was not one email in my inbox, which is always a bad sign. Crickets, literally crickets.”
However, the movie gained steam every week since its opening,eventually building to a global box office total of more than $430 million, and counting.
Of late, we’ve also seen Jackman being again wooed by Ryan Reynolds’ alter-ego frenemy, Deadpool. Jackman’s response? “Just back it up a little,” he sarcastically advised his friend. “It’s just a little much…Play a little hard to get. It’s not sexy.”
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