“I didn’t care”: Hugo Weaving names the most “meaningless” role of his career
Here’s an interesting question for you: which actor would you say is a shout for someone who isn’t exactly a household name, but still has the highest total box office in history?
If you went with Australian actor Hugo Weaving, and not just because you read his name in the headline up there, then congratulations, because his movies have indeed earned a scarcely fathomable $8.7billion over the years.
Of course it isn’t like people haven’t heard of Weaving, who has had a career that most would kill for, but the majority of it has been spent putting in superb supporting performances, often becoming a leading factor in the movies becoming as successful as they do, with a noteworthy example being his shape-shifting bad guy Agent Smith in The Matrix series (“Missster Annnnderson”) opposite Keanu Reeves.
While that was a global, culture-changing success, Weaving also appeared in Peter Jackson’s world-conquering Lord of the Rings trilogy, a filmmaking achievement which has rarely, if ever, been surpassed, as Elrond, who was apparently ‘the Master of Imlandris’, which means nothing to me; I just liked Gandalf and all the fire and stuff.
As if being in The Matrix and Lord of the Rings wasn’t enough, Weaving has also appeared in V for Vendetta, which is basically a documentary now, albeit made 21 years ahead of its time, and also yet more massive franchises, like Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger and Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the same year. Essentially, if you’re in charge of a colossal budget and you want to keep the internet comic book nerds happy, Weaving is the man you call.
But, unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work both ways, because if you ask Weaving about that last movie, or rather don’t ask about it because it doesn’t go well, he did not have a good time getting involved in the world of cars turning into enormous robots with buzzy voices and loads of lens flares everywhere.
Weaving told Collider, “That’s a weird job for me because it honestly was a two-hour voice job, initially. I was doing a play and I actually didn’t have time, anyway. It was one of the only things I’ve ever done where I had no knowledge of it, I didn’t care about it, I didn’t think about it… It was meaningless to me, honestly. I don’t mean that in any nasty way.”
Whether or not he enjoyed the experience of voicing bad tempered former-plane Megatron for the Michael Bay-directed assault on the senses, it didn’t stop the movie from becoming the fifth highest-grossing in all of cinema history on release, bringing in $1.135b at the box office, nor did it prevent a frightening array of acting talent from coming on board, with John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Leonard Nimoy, John Turturro and even an actual real life moon-walker in the shape of Buzz Aldrin all getting involved.
Weaving, however, didn’t even have much positive to say about Bay himself, refusing to offer much of an opinion other than to say, “I was never on set. I’ve seen his face on Skype. I know nothing about him, really. I just went in and did it. I never read the script. I just have my lines, and I don’t know what they mean. That sounds absolutely pathetic.”
Now 65, Weaving will be adding to his already stacked CV in the next year or so by making a sequel to cult classic Priscilla Queen of the Desert in addition to leading an upcoming TV series called The Airport Chaplain.
