by Paul Fischer
by
Paul Fischer
Amidst the sheer chaos of promoting
this year's most hyped blockbusters, Hugo 
Weaving
admits that he'd rather be acting than spending three
weeks on the road with The Matrix juggernaut. After junkets in
Los Angeles and the chaos of the Cannes Film Festival, Weaving tells us
"It's not really something that I really wanted to do but on the
other hand I figured, well look, this will be good, we're travelling a
lot, and it'll be good to catch up with everyone again." Even doing
the kind of big-time press that he has to undertake and staying in swanky
hotels is somewhat surreal for this down-to-earth acting veteran, who
returns to The Matrix as the often bleakly comic Agent Smith.
"But if you're gonna do it you might as well have a good time with
it and I'm looking forward to going to Cannes and all of that madness,"
Hugo says laughingly.
Yet Weaving turned down the opportunity to co-star with Hollywood heavyweight Keanu Reeves in the 1999 original. "I was making a film in London, was really busy, when my agent called and said that these guys were doing this film which I think she described as a big-budget science fiction thing. She mentioned there was a script coming my way, and they wanted me to put down a scene on tape and send it to them. I immediately said I don't want to be tested, I don't have time, and it didn't sound like something I wanted to do." Fortunately for Weaving, his agent persevered. "So, I kind of read through the script and I wasn't sure. Then I read the scene with Agent Smith and thought: Well the character is actually really quite cool, very funny and maybe it's something that I should think twice about, which I did, and then put this scene down. As soon as I met Larry and Andy, I started to actually think the character was something that would be really fun to play." Clearly the actor was right. Donning a dark suit and sunglasses, Weaving and company helped make The Matrix one of the most talked about and influential films in a decade. Nobody, least of all Hugo, could have predicted the pop cultural influences that The Matrix would permeate. "At the time we were filming we were not consciously sitting around and discussing that, but the more I talked to Larry and Andy, the more I read the scripts, and the more I saw what was being done, the more I realized the sort of film that we were making, but, not really to the extent to which it would become a popular sort of phenomenon. Then you start seeing more and more ads using Bullet Time or approximations of Bullet Time and you realize that it's had an enormous impact on the way in which people make films and on the way in which we'd like to see the world."
Weaving was required to adopt a considerable leap of faith before jumping into the next two Matrix extravaganzas. He had to commit before seeing a script. But there was something about the whole Matrix phenomenon that proved irresistible for Weaving and his American co-stars. (click for StarTalk with Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss and Laurence Fishburne) "I think the story wasn't complete. There was an enormous amount that had been hinted at in the first film
and needed to be explored, such as the
architecture of the Matrix," he says. But this devoted husband and
father of two needed more before committing to such a lengthy film shoot.
"I was a little bit concerned about repeating a character -- which
I had never done before -- and wondered what happens when you play the
same character in three films. Does it make it harder for you to go and
do something radically different after that? Maybe it does, but it 
doesn't
mean it's impossible. They assured me that the character would develop
in an interesting way. In the end it was about Larry and Andy, about the
story and about the idea that actually there was a development there in
that character and that he did kind of go places."
He does go places, many times over. In one of the most visually arresting moments in the film, dozens of Agent Smith(s) are fighting Keanu Reeves' Neo. Part Weaving, part CGI effects, Weaving admits that he was constantly laughing about what a truly funny profession this whole acting lark is. "I would constantly comment that it's so weird, being suspended up in the air, and the rain's pouring down on me, with Keanu looking at me, giggling, think to ourselves: What on earth are we doing? Is this life? So, in a sense it's a really weird place."
The Matrix Reloaded and, of
course, his role as Elrond in The Lord of the Rings trilogy,
are the icing on the cake for an actor trying to find his place in this
often odd profession for some 30 years. Perhaps being suspended in the
air and fighting with Keanu Reeves has as much to do with why the 43-year
old Nigerian-born Aussie became an actor in the first place. "I think
it had more to do with that sense of doing something really odd and doing
it with other people," Weaving recalls. "Film sets are constantly
amusing because you really are creating something that is so very surreal
and I kind of like that." Weaving admits that his perceptions of
acting have certainly changed since starting out way back when. "Initially
I probably didn't even call it acting, but dressing up or something. As
a kid I think you fully imagine the world in which you want to inhabit,
so you put some clothes on and just kind of freely imagine this world,
and it's a total imaginary world." That aspect of it hasn't changed,
says Weaving. "The thing that has changed, is the understanding
of what you want to do with it and also understanding the film industry
and the film business, which is a constant lesson." For
Hugo, the importance of acting needs to go beyond the business side of
it which he detests. For the actor, acting "is a wonderful art which
I think illuminates humanity." Weaving says that he derives both
pleasure
and dissatisfaction from acting. "More, because I am less self-cantered
about it and less because I find the industry and the business of it sometimes
depressing."
It's Weaving's loathing of the film business that has precluded him from moving to the States and he's happy with that decision. Very much at home in Australia with his wife Katrina and their two children Harry and Holly, the actor refuels his love of acting by returning to the stage as much as possible. "I am actually doing a play at the end of this year," a new production of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, for the Sydney Theatre Company. Not one to rest on his laurels, Hugo continuers to promote The Matrix, accompanied by his wife, and then heads to New Zealand for re-shoots on another long-awaited sequel: The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. He concedes that he has no idea how much of Hugo will end up in the third Rings film. "I'm not even sure what scenes we'll be shooting this time. Originally I wasn't in one of the films at all, but mainly in one and a little bit in three. The story line with Elrond and Aragorn and Arwen kind of developed a little bit, but how it's developed in the third one I am not entirely sure. I haven't got the scenes I'm going to be doing, but that's no surprise with Lord of The Rings. There is a tendency to pick your scenes and then get other versions of them and then finally on the day [of the shoot] you get another version of them and then as you're shooting, another version will come through."
In between shooting these Hollywood blockbusters, Weaving filmed the low-budget drama Peaches, with Jacqueline McKenzie. But it's The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings for which this reluctant of stars will continue to remain known for. At least, he says smilingly, he has been able to please both of his children. "I think Holly really loves the fact that I'm in Lord of the Rings while Harry rather likes the fact that I'm in The Matrix." If you can't please your kids, who can you please? "That's exactly right," concurs a laughing Mr Weaving.