Background and career
Hugo Wallace Weaving (born 4 April 1960) is a stage, screen, and voice actor. Born in Colonial Nigeria to British parents, Weaving has lived in Australia since 1976, although he retains British citizenship. He undertook his acting training at NIDA in Sydney. He became known internationally for his appearances in the Australian films Proof (1991) and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), and more widely known as Agent Smith in the first three The Matrix films (1999–2003) and Elrond in The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003). Weaving landed his first major role as English cricket captain Douglas Jardine on the Australian television series Bodyline (1984), and won his first AACTA Award for Priscilla. He is also known for his role as the title character in V for Vendetta (2005), The Wolfman (2010), Johann Schmidt / Red Skull in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), and again as Elrond in The Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014). He has won many Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) Awards for his film and television performances, as well as other awards for stage performances. He has also done several voice-over roles, including in the films Babe (1995), Happy Feet (2006), Happy Feet Two (2011), and as Megatron in the Transformers series (2007–2011). He reprised his roles of Agent Smith and Elrond in Matrix and Lord of the Rings video game adaptations.
Hugo Wallace Weaving was born on 4 April 1960 in Ibadan, Nigeria (then a British colony). He was the second child of English parents: mother Anne Lennard, a tour guide and former teacher, and father Wallace Weaving, a seismologist, who met as students at the University of Bristol. His maternal grandmother was Belgian. A year after his birth, his family returned to the United Kingdom, living in Bedford and Brighton. They then moved first to Melbourne, then Sydney in Australia; back to England briefly; Johannesburg in South Africa before returning to the UK, where they lived first in Beaconsfield and then Bristol. While in the UK, Weaving attended The Downs School, Wraxall, near Bristol, and Queen Elizabeth's Hospital. While at the Downs School, in 1973, Weaving played one of his first theatrical roles, taking the part of Captain Asquith in Robert Bolt's The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew. His family moved back to Sydney, Australia in 1976, to settle permanently. Hugo was 16, had just completed his O-levels, and was not keen to move. In Sydney, he attended Knox Grammar School, settled in quickly, and, according to his mother, was always able to make friends easily. His parents separated not long after they migrated. Weaving went on to study at Sydney's National Institute of Dramatic Art, graduating with a Diploma of Dramatic Art (Acting) in 1981. Weaving has said that though his roots are in Australia, and he considers it his country, he feels neither wholly English nor wholly Australian.
Weaving first appeared in a production by the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) in 1982, and by 2021 had worked in more than 20 of their productions. His first television role was in the 1984 Australian television series Bodyline, as the English cricket captain Douglas Jardine. Weaving appeared in the Australian miniseries The Dirtwater Dynasty in 1988 and as Geoffrey Chambers in the drama Barlow and Chambers: A Long Way From Home. He starred opposite Nicole Kidman in the 1989 TV mini-series Bangkok Hilton. He appeared as Sir John in Yahoo Serious's 1993 comedy Reckless Kelly, a lampoon of Australian outlaw Ned Kelly. In the mid-1990s, Weaving portrayed the drag queen Anthony "Tick" Belrose/Mitzi Del Bra in the 1994 film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and provided the voice of Rex the sheepdog in the 1995 family film Babe and its 1998 sequel Babe: Pig in the City. In 1998, he played a suspected serial killer in The Interview.
Weaving played the enigmatic and evil-minded Agent Smith in the 1999 film The Matrix. He later reprised that role in the film's 2003 sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. He was a voice actor in the cartoon film The Magic Pudding.
He received additional acclaim in the role of the half-elven lord Elrond in Peter Jackson's three-film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, released between 2001 and 2003. Weaving was the main actor in Andrew Kotatko's award-winning film Everything Goes (2004). He starred as a heroin-addicted ex-rugby league player in the 2005 Australian indie film Little Fish, opposite Cate Blanchett. Weaving played the title role as V in the 2005 film V for Vendetta, in which he was reunited with the Wachowskis, creators of The Matrix trilogy, who wrote the adapted screenplay. Actor James Purefoy was originally signed to play the role, but was fired six weeks into filming over creative differences. Weaving reprised his role as Elrond for the video game The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II. In 2006, he worked with Cate Blanchett on a reprise of the STC production of Hedda Gabler in New York City.
In a controversial move by director Michael Bay, Weaving was chosen as the Decepticon leader Megatron vocally in the 2007 live-action film Transformers, rather than using the original version of the character's voice created by the voice actor Frank Welker. Weaving himself was unaware of the controversy, having accepted the role based on Michael Bay's personal request; in a November 2008 Sun Herald interview, he said he had never seen Transformers. Though Weaving reprised his role in two sequels, he does not have much personal investment in the Transformers films. In February 2010, Weaving revealed to The Age: "Director Michael Bay talks to me on the phone. I've never met him. We were doing the voice for the second one and I still hadn't seen the first one. I still didn't really know who the characters were and I didn't know what anything was. It's a voice job, for sure, and people assume I've spent my life working on it, but I really know so little about it." Weaving played a supporting role in Joe Johnston's 2010 remake of the 1941 film The Wolfman, starring Benicio del Toro. Immediately after Wolfman wrapped in spring 2008, he returned home to Australia to film a lead role in the film Last Ride, directed by Glendyn Ivin. In early 2009, Guillermo del Toro, then director of The Hobbit films, prequels to The Lord of the Rings, confirmed his intent to again cast Weaving as Elrond of Rivendell in a BBC interview. When asked about reprising the role, Weaving replied that he was game, but had not officially been approached. Del Toro eventually left the project; Peter Jackson decided to direct the films himself but Weaving was not officially confirmed in the cast until May 2011. Weaving spent the summer of 2009 starring in the Melbourne Theatre Company's production of God of Carnage, portraying the caustic lawyer Alain Reille. He returned to the stage in November 2010 in Sydney Theatre Company's Uncle Vanya, co-starring Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh. Weaving filmed a guest role on Roxburgh's Australian TV series Rake in May 2010. In May 2009, Weaving accepted a co-starring role in the docudrama Oranges and Sunshine, about the forced migration of thousands of British children to Australia in the 1950s. Filming began in autumn 2009 in Nottingham, England, and Adelaide, South Australia, and continued through January 2010. The film premiered at the Rome International Film Festival on 28 October 2010 and garnered positive reviews. 2010 saw the release of Legend of the Guardians (formerly The Guardians of Ga'Hoole), in which Weaving has another high-profile voice role, portraying two different owls named Noctus and Grimble in Zack Snyder's film adaptation of Kathryn Lasky's popular series of children's books. On 4 May 2010, it was officially confirmed by Marvel Studios that Weaving would play the Nazi supervillain Johann Schmidt / Red Skull in the superhero film Captain America: The First Avenger. Weaving completed filming his role on the project in September 2010 and returned to Sydney to prepare for Uncle Vanya. It is unlikely he will sign on for any further installments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU); in an August 2011 Baltimore Sun interview, the actor confided he is weary of typecasting and of "blockbuster" films in general: "I think I've about had enough... I'm not sure how many more of them I'll make. It doesn't feel to me as though they've been the majority of my work, though that's probably the way it seems to most other people." Red Skull returned in the MCU films Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), with Ross Marquand replacing Weaving in the role.
