Blake Lively on Fame, Family, Good Fortune for Vogue's September ...

Jackman wears a Charvet scarf.

“Are you hungry?” she asks. “Should we order something? I think I’m going to go with fish.” And then we are on to the subject of Halloween costumes….

“They are megawatt stars,” Hugh Jackman tells me over the phone from London, talking about Blake and her husband. “These are like old-school megawatt stars…and of course I’ve spent many hours with them, like in pajamas just hanging out in their house with their nine hundred children and dogs and it is just as normal as can be, and Blake will be baking and cooking and saying, ‘Let’s make pizza,’ and then the next thing you turn around,” he says, describing her changing for an event, “and there she is, this incredible star. It’s…it’s astonishing to me.”

I ask him what he thinks it is, the transformation.

“It’s someone who is comfortable in their own skin,” is how he explains it. “You can’t make that happen. You can’t bestow it on someone. She says she’s shy. And I believe that. I think there’s a shyness there. I’ve seen it before. Nicole Kidman and others have it. There’s a shyness, and it leads into this ability to morph and shape-shift. And she’s, as I said, walking around in pajamas and then five minutes later—it’s Elizabeth Taylor! At the height of her beauty. And you’re like, What? How? And it’s totally…it’s miraculous. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.”

Luhrmann has something to say on this subject as well. “It may sound corny,” he tells me, “but a movie star projects light. They’re more luminous in a scene or on the screen. And while they can be deeply, deeply authentic and real, they are also aspirational in their glamour, their humanity. I’ve seen it in film, and I’ve seen it in drama, and I’ve seen it in musical stars: that you can be standing next to them and they’re lovely and human and the next thing, they’re giant on the stage, you know?”

Being with Blake Lively is not like being with any of her characters. Not the chic and wicked Emily Nelson from A Simple Favor, not the morally ambiguous Serena van der Woodsen from Gossip Girl, not even the strong and suffering Lily Bloom from her latest, the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling It Ends With Us. It is not like being with a celebrity who has been asked every possible question and carefully gives the practiced response. It is more like being in a fast-moving river, one that is changing every minute—from acting to film editing to running businesses to being a mother—and the current is so strong and sure, why not just go along for the ride?