Hugo Weaving

At 64 years old, Hugo Weaving has this physical status:

Hugo Wallace Weaving (born 4 April 1960) is an English-Australian actor.

He is best known for his role in The Matrix trilogy (1999–2003) and The Hobbit (2012–2014) film trilogies, including Elrond, and Marvel Cinematic Universe's Red Skull (2011–2019). Weaving's first television appearance was in the 1984 Australian television series Bodyline, in which he played English cricket captain Douglas Jardine.

He first came to fame in film as Martin in the Australian drama Proof (1991).

Anthony "Tick" Belrose/Mitzi Del Bra in the comedy-drama The Adventures of Priscilla (1994), as well as several roles in the science fiction film Cloud Atlas (2012).

Rex the male sheepdog in Babe (1995), Noah the Leading Elder Emperor in Happy Feet (2006) and Happy Feet Two (2011), and Megatron in the Transformers Film Series include Rex the male sheepdog. A Satellite Award, MTV Movie Award, and six Australian Film Institute Awards have been included among Weaving's acting accolades.

Early life

Weaving was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, to English parents; he is the son of Anne Lennard (1934), a tour guide and former instructor, and Wallace Weaving (born 1929), a seismologist who worked at the University of Bristol. His maternal grandmother, who was Belgian, was in charge of his care. His family returned to the United Kingdom after his birth, living in Bedford and Brighton before heading to Melbourne and Sydney in Australia; Johannesburg, South Africa; and then returning to the United Kingdom. While in the United Kingdom, he attended The Downs School in Wraxall, near Bristol, and Queen Elizabeth's Hospital. Weaving appeared in Barrington's The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew while at Downs School in 1973, playing Captain Asquith in Robert Bolt's The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew. In 1976, his family returned to Australia, where he attended Knox Grammar School in Sydney. In 1981, he graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney.

Personal life

Weaving was diagnosed with epilepsy when he was 13 years old. Despite the fact that the disease never affected him and stopped in his early 30s, he still prefers not to drive, considering the danger of a seizure. He has been with his longtime girlfriend Katrina Greenwood since 1984; the two children, Harry Greenwood, an actor, and Holly, an artist, have two children together.

Weaving also have a brother and a sister. He is the uncle of actress Samara Weaving, who also worked in Australia before transferring to American roles. Both appeared in the 2013 Australian film Mysteries Road. Morgan Weaving, his younger niece, appeared on the Australian soap opera Home and Away with her sister.

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Career

Douglas Jardine, the English cricket captain, was the English cricket captain, and weaving's first television appearance was in 1984 Australian television series Bodyline. Weaving appeared in the Australian miniseries The Dirtwater Dynasty in 1988 and in Geoffrey Chambers' drama Barlow and Chambers: A Long Way From Home. In the 1989 TV mini-series Bangkok Hilton, he appeared opposite Nicole Kidman. Weaving was named "Best Actor" by the Australian Film Institute in 1991 for his role in the low-budget Proof as the blind photographer. In Yahoo Serious's 1993 comedy Reckless Kelly, a lampoon of Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, he appeared as Sir John.

Weaving portrayed drag queen Anthony "Tick" Belrose/Mitzi Del Bra in the 1994 film Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and Rex the sheepdog in Babe, a family film set in the City. In 1998, he received the "Best Actor" award from the Montreal World Film Festival for his role as a feared serial killer in The Interview.

In the 1999 film The Matrix, Weaving played the enigmatic and evil-minded Agent Smith. The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, he reprised his role in the film's 2003 sequels. He appeared in the cartoon film The Magic Pudding.

In Peter Jackson's three-film version of The Lord of the Rings, he received more recognition for his role as half-elven lord Elrond. Weaving was the main star of Andrew Kotatko's award-winning film Everything Goes (2004). In the 2005 Australian indie film Little Fish, he starred as a hero-addicted ex-rugby league actor opposite Cate Blanchett. In 2005 film V for Vendetta, in which he was reunited with the Wachowskis, the screenplay's creators, who wrote the adapted screenplay, Weaving played the title role. Actor James Purefoy had intended to appear in the role but was forced to leave six weeks early due to creative inconsistencies. Weaving reshot the majority of Purefoy's scenes as V (even though his face is never shown), apart from a few minor dialogue-free scenes early in the film, where stuntman David Leitch performed all of V's stunts.

Weaving played Elrond in the video game The Battle of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II. He appears in stage productions by the Sydney Theatre Company (STC). In 2006, he worked with Cate Blanchett on a revival of Hedda Gabler's STC film in New York City. Weaving was chosen as the Decepticon leader Megatron vocally in the 2007 live-action film Transformers rather than using Frank Welker's original version.

Weaving himself was unaware of the situation and had accepted the position based on Michael Bay's personal request; in a November 2008 Sun Herald interview, he said he had never seen Transformers; Despite that Weaving reprised his role in two sequels, he does not have much invested in the Transformers films. "Director Michael Bay speaks to me on the phone in February 2010." I've never met him. For the second time, we were doing the voices, but I had yet to see the first one. I didn't know who the characters were and didn't know what the heck was and didn't know what it was like, so I didn't really know who they were and didn't know what it was. Yes, it's a voice job, and some believe I've spent my entire life on it, but I'm actually ignorant about it." "It was one of the few things I've ever done where I had no idea it was," Weaving told Collider, "I never knew about it," I didn't worry about it, but I didn't worry about it." They wanted me to do it, so they told me to do it. I regret the little bit in one way. I don't regret doing it, but I do a lot of things if it's meaningless. It was meaningless to me, really. I don't mean that in a nefarious manner."

Weaving appeared in Joe Johnston's 2010 adaptation of the 1941 film The Wolfman, starring Benicio del Toro. In the film Last Ride, directed by Glendyn Ivin, immediately after Wolfman finished in spring 2008, he returned to Australia to film a lead role. In a BBC interview in early 2009, Guillermo del Toro, the Hobbit film's director, confirmed his intention to cast Weaving as Elrond of Rivendell. Weaving replied that he was interested in the role but that he had not been approached. Del Toro eventually dropped out of the project; Peter Jackson was inspired to direct the films himself; but Weaving wasn't officially announced in the cast until May 2011.

Weaving appeared in God of Carnage, a Melbourne Theatre Company production starring the caustic lawyer Alain Reille. In November 2010 in Sydney Theatre Company's Uncle Vanya, co-starring Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh, he returned to the stage in November. In May 2010, Weaving filmed a guest appearance on Roxburgh's Australian television series Rake.

Weaving performed 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 has continued into January 2010. On October 28, 2010, the film premiered at the Rome International Film Festival and received rave reviews. Legend of the Guardians (formerly The Guardians of Ga'Hoole) was released in 2010 in which Weaving's second high-profile voice actor appeared in Zack Snyder's film adaptation of Kathryn Lasky's popular series of children's books.

Weaving would play the fictional Nazi Red Skull in Marvel Studios' superhero film Captain America: The First Avenger, on May 4, 2010. Weaving wrapped filming on the project in September 2010 and returned to Sydney to prepare for Uncle Vanya. In an August 2011 Baltimore Sun interview, the actor confessed that he has probably had enough footage to make another installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe; in an August 2011 Baltimore Sun interview, the actor admitted that he is weary of typecasting and of "blockbuster" films in general. I'm not sure how many more of them I'll make. It doesn't appear that they've been the majority of my work, but that's certainly the way it seems to most others.

The Key Man, which Weaving shot in 2006, debuted at the South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, on March 13. On April 1, the child migrant saga Oranges and Sunshine opened in the United Kingdom, marking the culmination of months of festival success in late 2010-early 2011. The Sydney Theatre Company and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced in March that STC's 2010 production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya will be revived in Washington, D.C., during the month of August. Months of rumors came to an end when Weaving appeared on The Hobbit's New Zealand set, just weeks before a production spokesperson confirmed the actor's return as Elrond in Peter Jackson's prequel trilogy to The Lord of the Rings. He appeared in David Mitchell's adaptation of Cloud Atlas, which was part of the Wachowskis. Tom Hanks, Ben Whishaw, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Jim Broadbent, and Susan Sarandon appeared on the film in September 2011.

Weaving's attention shifted to his stage career in 2012, with a return to the Sydney Theatre Company to appear in a new version of Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses in March. He portrayed Vicomte de Valmont, a character he first appeared onstage in 1987. Pamela Rabe, his frequent stage foil, costarred. During a ten-day run at Lincoln Center in New York, Weaving and Cate Blanchett reprised their roles in STC's internationally lauded production of Uncle Vanya.

In addition to his busy role in three forthcoming Australian films in summer 2012, the actor appeared in three new Australian films. Mystery Road, a Western-tinged police drama written and directed by Ivan Sen, began filming in June 2012. Weaving appeared in the prison drama titled Healing for director Craig Monahan, with whom he also appeared in The Interview (1998) and Peaches (2005). In a segment of Tim Winton's collection of related stories based on Tim Winton's collection of linked tales titled "The Commission," directed by David Wenham, he appeared in a segment of the Australian anthology film The Turning. In Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot, he appeared with Richard Roxburgh and Philip Quast in a thriller by Philip Quast. The Sydney Theatre Company's Waiting For Godot finished in 2013.

Weaving reprised Agent Smith's role in a GM television commercial for their "Brilliant Machines" advancements in healthcare administration software, which was supposed to air during a break from Saturday Night Live's 13 April edition, and has since received multiple airings on major cable networks.

Weaving performed the titular role in Macbeth's production from the 26th to the 27th of September 2014. Weaving's role in an unusual interpretation of the Shakespearian tragedy by young Sydney director Kip Williams was described by Peter Gotting of The Guardian as "the job of his career."

Weaving appeared in Craig Silvey's film adaptation of Jasper Jones in October 2015.

Thaddeus Valentine, a young boy from Weaving, appeared in Mortal Engines in 2018.

In Tony Kushner's adaptation of The Visit, Weaving appeared as Alfred in 2020.

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Awards

• 1991 – Australian Film Institute Awards, Best Actor in a Lead Role: Proof
• 1998 – Australian Film Institute Awards, Best Actor in a Lead Role: The Interview
• 2005 – Australian Film Institute Awards, Best Actor in a Lead Role: Little Fish
• 2007 – The Constellation Awards, Best Male Performance in a 2006 Science Fiction Film, TV Movie, or Miniseries: V for Vendetta
• 2011 – Sydney Theatre Award, Best Supporting Actor:Sydney Theatre Company's Uncle Vanya
• 2012 – Helen Hayes Award, Best Supporting Performer, Non-Resident Production: Sydney Theatre Company's Uncle Vanya
• 2018 – Helpmann Award for Best Male Actor in a Play, for Arturo Ui in the Sydney Theatre Company's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
• 2018 – Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film: Patrick Melrose
• 2020 – Honorary Officer of the Order of Australia