Hugh Jackman appeared to be making the most of his lunch as he carried a box of leftovers after a relaxed date with girlfriend Sutton Foster in Pasadena, California, on Thursday.

The 58-year-old actor and 51-year-old actress confirmed their relationship publicly in January 2025, about a year after Jackman announced his separation from former wife Deborra-Lee Furness, 70.

Jackman kept things casual in a grey jumper and baseball cap. Foster opted for a blue striped top paired with classic denim jeans during the low-key outing.

The sighting comes after reports earlier this year that the couple had left New York City in search of a quieter lifestyle in North Carolina.

Jackman and Foster first crossed paths while starring opposite each other in the 2022 Broadway revival of The Music Man.

Jackman revealed in early 2024 that he and Furness were ending their 27-year marriage. His relationship with Foster became public several months later.

In June, reports claimed that Jackman and Foster were finding it difficult to balance their demanding careers with their relationship.

An insider told Woman’s Day that the pair were short on “quality time” and had encountered what was described as a “major roadblock.”

According to the source, Jackman’s packed professional schedule had also led Foster to better understand what his former wife may have experienced during their marriage.

“Hugh’s a workaholic and she’s starting to understand how lonely Deb must have felt at times,” the insider claimed.

Foster has significant demands of her own, juggling her acting career while raising her nine-year-old daughter, Emily Dale, whom she shares with former husband and screenwriter Ted Griffin.

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“Sutton’s finding it hard to be by Hugh’s side at so many events, and he invites her to every single one,” the source continued.

“It’s not that she’s shy, but she’s busy with her own career and still has a young daughter to raise.”

“Sadly, the biggest casualty of all is Hugh and Sutton finding quality time together—they’re like passing ships sometimes.”

Alongside his personal commitments, Jackman has several film projects in development.

Following recent starring roles in The Sheep Detectives and The Death of Robin Hood, the Australian actor is set to lead a remake of Treasure Island.

Jackman will portray the legendary pirate Long John Silver in the Ridley Scott film, which also features Bill Skarsgård and Jodie Comer.

The Wolverine star was recently slammed by his own fans for posting a loved-up photo with Sutton at the premiere of his latest film. 

Posting to Instagram, Hugh uploaded a smiling snap alongside his girlfriend at AMC Lincoln Square 13 in New York, adding the caption: ‘And we’re off to the premiere of The Death Of Robin Hood.’

In the image, a beaming Hugh was seen wrapping his arm around Foster’s waist, as she ecstatically threw one arm up in the air. 

‘I see your pics I think of how heartbroken Deb must be,’ one user wrote. Another added: ‘This is so cringy.’ 

‘Bro, stop posting pictures with her. Literally no one supports this relationship,’ someone else commented.  

When Thomas Markle first attracted public attention a decade ago, he was living in a struggling coastal town in Mexico and appeared an unlikely figure to take centre stage at a royal wedding.

But the prospect of Meghan Markle’s wedding to Prince Harry soon became far more complicated, with her strained relationship with her father remaining in the headlines ever since.

The Duchess of Sussex has now said she is “deeply distressed” by allegations that her father possessed a collection of child sex abuse images.

Meghan’s half-brother, Thomas Markle Jr, claimed he discovered a stash of images belonging to their father at his former home in the Philippines.

Thomas Sr has denied possessing child sex images, dismissing the allegations as “sick lies”.

The Daily Mail has revisited the key moments in the complicated history of the father-daughter relationship.

1988

Meghan’s parents, Doria Ragland and Thomas Markle, divorce. Meghan largely lives with her mother but remains close to her father.

Meghan was the only child of Mr Markle’s marriage to Ms Ragland. He also has two children, Samantha Markle and Thomas Jr, from an earlier marriage.

Early 2011

After retiring as a television lighting engineer, Thomas Sr leaves southern California and moves to Rosarito, Mexico.

July 2016

Meghan meets Prince Harry through mutual friends in London, and the pair begin a relationship.

2017

The following May, Thomas Sr is approached while buying cigarettes near his home in Rosarito and asked about Meghan’s engagement to Harry.

He reveals that he is “very pleased… delighted” and says he would “love to” walk his daughter down the aisle, while insisting: “You know I can’t talk.”

2018

As preparations continue for Thomas Sr to formally walk Meghan down the aisle, Harry’s Kensington Palace spokesman urges journalists to stop “harassing” him.

Soon afterwards, photographs emerge showing Thomas Sr in Mexico preparing for the wedding. One image appears to show him reading an online report about his daughter’s plans to marry.

The photographs initially appear to have been taken without Thomas Sr’s knowledge or consent. However, six days before the Windsor Castle ceremony, The Mail on Sunday reports that he had staged the images in cooperation with the photographer in exchange for money.

Two days later, Thomas Sr announces that he will not attend the ceremony, saying he does not want to embarrass his daughter. He also claims to have recently suffered a heart attack. The then-Prince Charles steps in to accompany Meghan during the ceremony.

Three months after the wedding, Meghan is reported to be “taking a bit of time out” from her father. Thomas Sr is said to have ended a phone call with Harry during an argument over the staged photographs.

At some point during the summer, although the exact month is unknown, a letter containing unspecified allegations about Thomas Sr is sent to the Metropolitan Police before later being shared with Meghan.

2019

Meghan is revealed to have written to her father shortly after the wedding, in August 2018, asking him to stop ‘victimising’ her by giving interviews to the media.

He had been claiming a ‘wall of silence’ had formed between them since staged photos debacle, with his texts and letters ignored.

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Friends of Meghan deny she has been ignoring him, saying she retains ‘a lot of sympathy for him’.

Later in the year Thomas Sr is complaining that he has never met his new grandson, Harry and Meghan’s firstborn Archie, saying: ‘They are not wonderful to their own family’.

2020

Thomas Sr admits he gave Meghan’s letter to him to The Mail on Sunday, saying it was to show it was far from the ‘loving’ communication her friends had claimed, and had in fact signalled the ‘end of the relationship’ between father and daughter.

2021

Meghan tells Oprah Winfrey in an unaired section of the estranged royal couple’s bombshell interview that her father ‘betrayed’ her by deceitfully working with journalists before the wedding – adding that she has ‘found it hard to reconcile’ with him.

Later in the year Thomas Sr talks of taking court action to gain access to his grandchildren by Meghan, Archie and Lilibet. Nothing comes of it.

2022

Thomas Sr is hospitalised in Mexico, then America, when he suffers a stroke – and scraps a second visit to Britain, this time for TV appearances to comment on Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.

He had been due to visit Windsor Castle at last, but as a tourist, as he is still not talking to his daughter, and has described Harry as ‘snotty’ to him.

Meghan tells her Netflix documentary ‘Harry & Meghan’ in December 2022 that she has had no meaningful contact with her father for several years.

2023

Thomas Sr tells a TV documentary that Meghan has ‘killed me and then mourned me’, but that he refuses ‘to be buried by her’ – and remains ‘open to any kind of conversation’ to rebuild their relationship.

2024

Thomas Sr turns 80 – saying he has not spoken to Meghan for six years, and longs to hear from her. 

She is living with Harry 250 miles from his Mexico home in her Montecito mansion.

2025

Thomas Sr moves to the Philippines with son Thomas Jr.

Thomas Sr has this week claimed the computers allegedly containing child sex abuse images were boxed up at this point to be sent to the Philippines, and have not been in his possession since.

That December, he has his left leg amputated below the knee after suffering a blood clot. He says: ‘My only wish before I die is to meet my grandkids.’ 

While in hospital, he receives a letter from Meghan.

2026

Now with one leg, Markle leaves the Philippines in May to return to America, hoping to be fitted with a prosthetic limb.

He has talked of falling in love with Filipino nurse Rio Canedo, 46, a divorced mother of two, during his rehabilitation.

He is in the same country as Meghan again – until she relocates to England with Harry in August.

Thomas Jr then claims in October that he found a child sex image on a phone inside his father’s storage box in the Philippines in July.

He then opened a computer to allegedly see ‘hundreds’ of disturbing thumbnail images.

Today, Meghan says she is ‘deeply distressed’ by accusations against her father, and reveals she learned of them from the letter in 2018.

The man who answered the door appeared warm and reassuring—almost fatherly—which comforted the two teenage girls searching for somewhere to stay. “Come in, girlies,” he said with a smile. Nothing immediately seemed threatening. Children were living in the house, his wife was present, and there was also a young woman named Shirley, whom he introduced as his “lover”. Strange, perhaps, but it sounded like a joke.

A builder and general handyman, he was known locally for repairing homes and giving neighbours lifts in his car. To 17-year-old Kathleen Richards, he appeared dependable. She would later learn the devastating truth that danger can hide behind an ordinary, respectable image. The address was 25 Cromwell Street. The man was Fred West. Kathleen had just stepped into the home of one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers.

A year later, Kathleen escaped the house barefoot and still dressed in her pyjamas after being pressured to take part in one of Fred and Rose West’s grotesque “games”. It would be many years before she understood just how close she had come to never leaving. Shirley Robinson, the young woman Kathleen had seen in the kitchen, would not survive. She was murdered by the Wests while pregnant with Fred West’s child—making his description of her as his “lover” technically true, though “abuser” would have been far more accurate.

Kathleen remains troubled by the possibility that she may have seen West bury Shirley from an upstairs window. “I remember him digging after Shirley disappeared,” she recalls. “He said she’d gone to Germany. I didn’t question it. He was always doing DIY. My dad had been the same.”

Nearly half a century later, Kathleen’s experience is revisited in a new documentary that takes her back to 1977, the year she lived as a lodger in the Wests’ home. It makes for painful viewing. At times she trembles and struggles to process her own memories. For decades, she was unable to talk about what happened there.

What Kathleen finds hardest to explain is not simply how frightening the Wests became, but how trustworthy they seemed at the beginning. “I genuinely trusted them,” she says. “They seemed respectable.” The extent of the crimes committed at Cromwell Street was not revealed until 1994, when 12 victims were connected to Fred West. Nine were discovered buried on the property as police spent months searching the cellar and areas beneath the floors. West died by suicide in prison in 1995 before facing trial, while Rose West was later convicted of ten murders.

Kathleen’s account helps explain how the couple were able to prey on vulnerable young women for so long. Fred and Rose West drew in people who were isolated, homeless or without reliable support. Kathleen, who had been born in Dublin, and her 18-year-old sister Deirdre had left home because Deirdre was pregnant. Kathleen had already endured sexual abuse, but when she tried to tell her mother, she was dismissed and told to go outside and play. The message stayed with her: girls who speak out may simply be ignored. “I thought, this is just what happens,” she says. “You don’t do anything. You forget it.”

That conditioning shaped her response when the apparently kind landlord began abusing her. “It’s only a game, girlie,” he would say as he pressed himself against her on the stairs. Kathleen was alarmed, but she did not scream. As the household’s disturbing sexual atmosphere became clearer, she felt bewildered more than terrified. She had barely had any experience of relationships and struggled to understand what was happening.

Over the following months, the behaviour escalated. Kathleen witnessed incidents she could not make sense of, including Rose watching pornography.

Eventually, Fred asked whether Kathleen wanted to watch with them. She tried to make herself invisible, pressing against the walls in the hope that he would leave her alone. One night, he attempted to force her to watch an explicit film with him and Rose. When Rose moved in to kiss her, Kathleen was still unable to comprehend what was taking place. “I didn’t know what she was doing. I thought she might bite me,” she says. Then she understood the threat. “I thought, ‘That’s it now. This isn’t a game. This is serious.’ I believed I was about to be raped.”

Kathleen may owe her life to the quick thinking that led her to ask for five minutes alone before escaping barefoot. Rather than going to the police, she ran to a bus stop where she expected her sister to arrive. The two women fled to their brother’s nearby home, and Kathleen tried to shut away the house and everything she had seen there. Fred West understood that vulnerable girls like Kathleen were unlikely to report what had happened.

In 1994, Kathleen was a mother of three when television reports showed police excavating the garden at 25 Cromwell Street. She immediately phoned her sister, who was watching the same coverage. Even then, neither could grasp the scale of the horror. “We kept thinking, ‘They couldn’t have done that. They weren’t that bad. There must be some mistake,’” Kathleen recalls. Learning what had happened to Shirley devastated her. “My sister and I had given her clothes for the baby,” she says. “I remember thinking, ‘She never got to use those baby clothes.’”

Kathleen gave brief evidence during Rose West’s trial, telling the court how terrified she had been of her. “She scared the living daylights out of me,” she said. “I think she was the one in control.” Even after testifying, Kathleen largely kept her experiences private. It was not until last year, when she wrote a book, that she began speaking publicly in greater detail. “I carried the shame,” she says. “It took me years to understand that it was never mine to carry.”

The documentary also brings Kathleen together with another woman who briefly lived at Cromwell Street. Their emotional reunion, after 47 years apart, is among its most affecting moments. So too is their return to the site, where the Wests’ house has long been demolished.

As they reconnect, the women ask one another a haunting question: “Do you remember the smell?” Kathleen says the hallway at 25 Cromwell Street always carried the odour of damp. It faded slightly on the upper floors, but never disappeared from her memory. Even today, she sometimes turns to her husband and asks whether he can smell damp in the room. He cannot. “I think I’m always going to smell damp,” she says.

Surviving Fred And Rose West: Inside Cromwell Street, Tuesday at 9pm on U&W and streaming on U.