Hugo Weaving voiced Megatron without ever watching a Transformers film
Hugo Weaving gave Megatron his snarl in three Transformers films, and admitted he had never seen the first one while recording the second. He had never met the director, who briefed him by phone. It was a rare shrug from an actor better known for Agent Smith, Elrond and a masked revolutionary.
Weaving was born on 4 April 1960 in Ibadan, Nigeria, to English parents; his father was a seismologist. The family moved constantly, through England, Australia and South Africa, before settling in Sydney in 1976. He trained at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1981, and still describes himself as feeling neither fully English nor fully Australian, though he calls Australia home.
His first television role was, fittingly for a man raised between two cricketing nations, the English captain Douglas Jardine in the 1984 series Bodyline, about the notorious Ashes tour. A best actor award for playing a blind photographer in the low-budget Proof in 1991 marked him out, and in 1994 he played a drag performer in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. He also voiced Rex the sheepdog in Babe.
Then came the parts audiences worldwide recognise. He was the icy Agent Smith across the first three Matrix films and the elf lord Elrond in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, returning for The Hobbit. In V for Vendetta he took over the title role after the original lead was fired six weeks into filming, reshooting nearly all of it behind a mask that never comes off. Marvel cast him as the Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avenger, but by 2011 he said he had about had enough of blockbusters, and the character later went to another actor.
His heart often seems to lie on stage. He works regularly with the Sydney Theatre Company, taking Uncle Vanya with Cate Blanchett to Washington and New York, and in 2012 he played the scheming Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a role he had first tackled 25 years earlier. Alongside Hollywood work he keeps returning to smaller Australian films, such as the outback thriller Mystery Road.
Source: Hugo Weaving
