BackGrid/AKM-GSIHugh Jackman is a real life superhero!
The 47-year-old Wolverine star rescued his 15-year-old son, Oscar, after he got caught in a riptide in the ocean at Sydney's Bondi Beach in his native Australia on Saturday, Australian news outlets reported. With the help of another man, he also guided daughter Ava, 10, out of the water and helped lifeguards direct other swimmers to safety amid the rising, violent waves.
"Hugh and his family are 100 percent fine," the actor's rep said in a statement to E! News. "It looks a lot more dramatic than it was."
Jackman and the children were reunited with his wife Deborra-Lee Furness back on the beach, The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported, adding that the actor was too shaken to speak about the rescue.
The actor was with his kids in the water and was chatting with rugby and reality TV star Dan Conn and My Kitchen Rules' Lynzey Murphy when the boy and girl became caught in the current and began to be dragged out to sea, The Daily Telegraph said.
Photos and video of the rescue showed Jackman swimming and pulling a man as he pulls Ava along, while a lifeguard guides them from the shore. The actor also helping his son in the water. Oscar is later seen riding in a surf rescue dinghy.
"He wasn't rescuing me, I was assisting him to get his daughter up to the sandbar," the man, Peter Adam, told Australia's Nine News. "He then grabbed my hand to get us up. He then went to get his son."
Jackman also waved at other swimmers out farther, trying was then seen waving at others further out to sea, trying to get them to swim to shore.
A former lifeguard and witness told The Daily Telegraph Jackman "stopped and helped this bloke stand up and he also helped his son," adding, "The swell was pretty nasty."
Lifeguards made 43 rescues and the beach was later shut down, the newspaper said.
"He was pretty level headed," Murphy told The Daily Telegraph. "If you start freaking out in front of your children it is only going to make it worse."