Hugo Weaving is one of the most popular actors in Hollywood. Known for being arguably the most iconic villain in Sci-fi history with his role as Agent Smith in The Matrix Trilogy, Weaving has gone on to leave his mark in Hollywood as one of the greatest actors ever.
Asides from Agent Smith, other popular credits to his name includes playing Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avenger and Elrond in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. He also acted in 2012’s Cloud Atlas and voiced Rex in Babe, Noah in Happy Feet and Happy Feet Two.
However, here are 5 things you probably didn’t know about Hugo Weaving, including roles you never knew he played.
- Hugo Weaving is a Nigerian
Hugo was born in University College Teaching Hospital (UCH) Ibadan, on April 4, 1960, to English parents Anna and Wallace Weaving. His mother was a teacher and his father was a seismologist. The Wallaces spent a year in Nigeria after his birth before moving back to England.
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- Hugo Weaving played Megatron in Transformers
Megatron was originally meant to be voiced using the original version created by the voice actor, Frank Welker. However, in what later became a minor controversy, Hugo ended up voicing the leader of the Decepticons at Michael Bay’s personal request.
- He Voiced Transformers 2 Without Knowing Anything About The Transformers
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.” The consequences for this, however, is that Hugo has no investment in the Transformers franchise, even though he acted in three of the four movies so far.
- Hugo Weaving Was “V” in V For Vendetta
Weaving played the masked vigilante in his reunion with The Matrix creators, the Wachowskis, in 2006 Box Office hit V for Vendetta. Actor James Purefoy was originally signed to play the role, but he pulled out four weeks into filming. Weaving reshot most of James Purefoy’s scenes as V apart from a couple of minor dialogue-free scenes early in the film. Weaving’s face was never shown in the movie.
- Hugo Weaving is Epileptic
At age 13, Hugo Weaving was diagnosed with Epilepsy and as such has never had a driver’s license. He opted out of getting one due to his medical condition.