Hugo Weaving (Actor)

Hugo Weaving arrives at the premiere of V for Vendetta. (Photo: Evan Agostini / Getty Images)

About Hugo Weaving

An attractive blond leading man of Australian films, Weaving scored an international hit as one of a trio of drag queens heading across the continent in "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" (1994). He made his film debut as a naive bumpkin who becomes caught up in a love triangle in the low-budget "The City's Edge" (1983), reportedly one of the first Australian films to focus on the plight of its native aborigines. Weaving followed with romantic roles as a dour tutor in "For Love Alone" (1985) and the title character, a bounder employed by a sickly titled Englishman, in the period melodrama "The Right Hand Man" (1986). In "Wendy Cracked a Walnut" (1990), Weaving portrayed a fictional character who comes to life in the fantasies of a woman (Rosanna Arquette).

The actor hit his stride with his award-winning performance as a distrustful blind photographer in Jocelyn Morehouse's "Proof" (1991). As Martin, Weaving was both touching and mysterious as he negotiated his way through relationships with his adoring housekeeper (Genevieve Picot) and a restaurant worker (Russell Crowe) on whom Martin relies for descriptions of the photographs he takes. In 1993, he appeared as a villainous capitalist in Yahoo Serious' "Reckless Kelly", as Anthony LaPaglia's partner in the crime drama "The Custodian" and as a husband involved with insurance fraud in Stephan Elliott's feature debut "Frauds". The following year, Elliott cast Weaving as a drag queen in the surprise hit, "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert". He also voiced Rex, the aging sheepdog, in the delightful fantasy "Babe" (1995).

While "Priscilla" made him known on a world-wide basis, Weaving eschewed Hollywood fare. He offered a strong turn as a self-destructive burnt-out hippie who meets up with some petty criminals in "True Love and Chaos" (1997). He was hilarious as a predatory real estate agent in Rose Troche's unjustly little-seen "Bedrooms and Hallways" and received his second Best Actor Award from the Australian Film Institute as a petty thief undergoing police interrogation in "The Interview" (1998).

Despite maintaining a rather low-profile, Weaving saw his stock rise again in the USA as the malevolent Agent Smith in the hit sci-fi thriller "The Matrix" (1999). He later returned for the highly anticipated sequels (which were filmed back-to-back) "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions" (both in 2003), in which 100 versions of Weaving as the sneering computer program battled Keanu Reeves on screen. Tackling another three-segment frnachise, Weaving also consented to appear back-to-back-to-back in director Peter Jackson's ambitious, jaw-dropping"Lord of the Rings" trilogy, appearing in a small but crucial role as the elf king Elrond in all three of the films, "The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001), "The Two Towers" (2002) and "Return of the King" (2003), making him part of two of the most commercially and criticaly successful film franchises of their era.

A handful of Weaving's many TV appearances Down Under have made their way to the small screen in the USA. He co-starred with Julie Christie and Sarah Jessica Parker in the CBS miniseries "Dadah Is Death" (1988). Weaving also appeared in the PBS biopic "Melba" about famed Australian opera star Nellie Melba (shown on "Great Performances" in 1989) and was featured alongside Nicole Kidman in the miniseries "Bangkok Hilton" (TNT, 1990).

Notes

"I think," Weaving says, "when your image becomes so big that it's hard for a viewer to see a character, then I think you're in danger as an actor of being unable to perform what you should be doing. And it becomes harder for you to successfully create another human being."---quoted to CNN.com, March 20, 2006.

"To me acting originally became an extension of game playing. Childhood games that kinda grew into something else... As I've got older it's changed and it's moved more towards self-understanding about how people escape into other worlds. It's become me trying to open doors into other people."---Weaving quoted in The iZINE (www.thei.aust.com), July 1997.