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00:08Hello Hugo how are you? I'm well how are you? This is going to be so lovely because you must
00:14be the most un-Hollywood Hollywood star that I'll ever meet because staying grounded here in
00:20Australia has been so important to you hasn't it? There's so much putting on other faces when you're
00:25an actor anyway I sort of felt like being grounded in place and a particular culture is really
00:31important. And your roles are so diverse are there key elements to a character that might draw you to
00:37it? I'm not really drawn to heroes and even though I've played a lot of villains I'm not really drawn
00:44to black and white types so I'm interested in complex human psychologies and complex human
00:52relationships. And I've finally found someone who loves a good long walk like me. Yes. We'll go for
00:58a walk shall we? A nice long walk. Yeah let's do that. Okay I'll see you soon. I'm Virginia Trioli
01:06and I've
01:07spent my life paying attention to creative Australians and wondering what is going on in that wild mind of
01:13theirs. In this series I'll showcase artists and performers at the peak of their powers and tell
01:20the story of their triumphs, their stumbles and why they make the glorious work we love so much.
01:27Hugo Weaving is one of Australia's most recognisable and internationally successful actors.
01:33You have only one choice. He starred in some of the biggest Hollywood franchises of modern times
01:39but is also a hero of Australian theatre, a master of transformation and someone who has made both
01:46the good guy and the villain his own. I'm thrilled to be unashamedly celebrating the art of making
01:53because we are a country of so many brilliant creative types.
02:12Hello. Hello Virginia. My hero at the top of the stairs. Great to see you. You too Virginia. We're in
02:19your old hood.
02:19Yep. Woolloomooloo. Used to live in Cathedral Street. Long time ago. Well I think we should do the thing that
02:25you and I most love doing which is walking.
02:28Walk. Let's get walking. Let's do that shall we.
02:36Is remaining in Australia and being based here, is that a deliberate creative choice for you?
02:41Uh, yeah. Yeah, it is. I think because I moved around the world as a kid so much. Yeah.
02:47By the time I came back here and went to drama school here in the post Whitlam era where we
02:53were celebrating who we are and what our culture is and our stories.
02:57That was something that I sort of was born into as a young actor and that to me is still
03:03what I do I think.
03:05Even though now I think times have changed so much younger actors tend to want to go to Hollywood but
03:12I've always felt that working here telling stories from here whether it's on stage or on screen or on small
03:21screen is like critical to me feeling like I have a place and I'm a part of a larger culture.
03:36Well that beautiful building you walked to every day for years, right?
03:40Yes, I did for the first two years out of NIDA walking there pretty much every day to do a
03:45show at the Sydney Theatre Company at the drama theatre there because that was the only place that back then
03:51they performed which was, yeah, it's not a bad office.
03:56It's not a bad office at all. The other really important part in your career of this area and this
04:01city, city of Sydney, was that it was your co-star in the massive movie The Matrix and The Matrix
04:07franchise.
04:08Yeah, well that's right. The Matrix was filmed here. All three of them were actually but the first one was
04:14big and it was a big because Fox Studios had just opened and so it was like the first film
04:18in there.
04:19Of course, it made a huge splash around the world as a film and it was technologically like, you know,
04:26really breaking new ground.
04:28Amazing, yeah.
04:28And a wonderful role for me so, yeah, it was great and Sydney was the backdrop but of course that
04:35building was never seen so it's the Matrix, they don't have the Opera House.
04:54You were saying earlier that you moved around a lot as a child.
04:58My parents moved to West Africa and then my dad had a job working as a seismologist for a company,
05:07Discovering Oil.
05:08About countries, schools, houses, friends, language, like everything would change but there was a sense that everywhere we went was
05:20like wonderfully new and different and so I really value my childhood.
05:27There's your mum?
05:29There's your mum, chubby cheek me and my mum who's now 91 and she's great and my brother Simon but
05:38yes, very much, very, very grounded, very, very supportive, very, very loving family I grew up in.
05:49After years of moving between countries, in the late 1970s, Hugo's family returned to Australia.
05:57I went to the University of New South Wales at NIDA, 22 kids.
06:01It was a hothouse in a way in the sense that you're working every day, nine to five, at school
06:08learning, I love learning, reading plays and then second and third year particularly putting on a lot of work.
06:15I think it was just a massive liberation and affirmation of what I was kind of leaning to and what
06:23I really wanted to do and I had a sort of stupid confidence.
06:26I don't feel particularly confident as a human being but at that age I thought, oh, I can do anything.
06:33So how did the two of you meet?
06:36I'd just started uni, he was doing his final year at NIDA and they toured their end of NIDA production
06:47of Twelfth Night and I just, I looked at his name and I checked him out and I always thought,
06:54wow, one day it would be great to meet that guy and maybe, who knows, work with him.
07:02Hugo's working life has always been in the theatre and on the stage, but Australian television opened the door to
07:10life on the screen.
07:12Byron Kennedy and George Miller asked Hugo to play the controversial English cricket captain Douglas Jardine in Bodyline, the celebrated
07:21television series on the controversial 1932 Ashes Tour.
07:25I owe George a lot actually and George and Byron and George Obelby who taught me at NIDA also directed
07:33some of Bodyline and he was the one who I think recommended me to George Miller and Byron.
07:40What's interesting to me is that there's a through line through your work of you always wanting to find not
07:46only interesting characters, but complex characters that you can find some humanity in.
07:51And Douglas Jardine is a perfect example of that because the most loathed person in Australia is the English captain.
07:57But you found, you found elements in him.
08:00I have no doubt that history will remember you as a man who was stooped to conquer.
08:06Well, history has already forgotten you.
08:10He's a patrician Englishman.
08:13Yes, he's of a certain class.
08:15It's easy to make him the villain.
08:18And even Kennedy Miller made him into the villain.
08:20Of course, well, you had to have one in that story.
08:22I know you guys want to make him the villain, but I accept that that's part of what we're doing.
08:28Bradman's the hero, Jardine's the villain, but I'm not going to go the whole hog.
08:33And they wrote him as a fully functioning, grounded human being.
08:38Were there any key lessons, because you were a relatively young actor then, from the Kennedy Miller years?
08:43George Whaley, my acting teacher at NIDA, had said, when you're in front of the camera, just cut everything by
08:5080%.
08:51Which was, like, terrible advice, but that was the sort of thinking, you just mumble and don't move your face.
08:58Is that for real?
09:01Sort of thing.
09:02Which I've actually, like, well, I keep trying to challenge that.
09:06So through osmosis, I slowly learned a bit more about film acting, but I think it took, honestly, took about
09:1310 years for me to really, really sort of start to feel comfortable in front of the camera.
09:19Can we say that you were predestined to be an actor because you were a star in your father's Super
09:248 films from a very young age?
09:27Yes.
09:28Yes, so my dad was given a camera as a wedding present by his dad.
09:32So he had his camera, and he was filming us as we were growing up, little kids travelling all over
09:38the world.
09:38Everything he filmed on 8mm, it wasn't even Super 8, he would send back to his dad in Cheltenham, in
09:45England.
09:46And then his dad would get it developed, and then he would screen that for the family, and they would,
09:52all the relatives would go around and they'd see the sort of latest information from the, you know, the grandkids.
09:59So, therefore, every holiday we had, or sometimes on a Sunday around the pool in South Africa or wherever, my
10:06dad would be filming us.
10:08Well, this is a really important bit of filmmaking in your career, but also a really wonderful example of...
10:17Terrible acting.
10:18Your early terrible acting.
10:20I was going to say the opposite, actually.
10:22This is from Proof, and it's where we see your wonderful, prickly, mistrustful character of Martin making his outrageous demand
10:32of Russell Crowe that he provide evidence, proof of everything that he's seen.
10:36I'll make it a bit easier for you, Andy.
10:38Try five different ways to describe how the cat looks.
10:41And it really is an almost perverse demand that he's asking.
10:44Um, dead.
10:51Limp.
10:52Sick.
10:53Limp.
10:54Andy holding limp cat in waiting room of vet.
10:59Nine words.
11:00The photograph.
11:01Is that the right way up?
11:02Yeah.
11:16What are you doing?
11:19I'm labelling it.
11:21Why?
11:23Proof.
11:26Of what?
11:28That what's in the photograph is what was there.
11:31It was the first time I'd read something that was really exciting to me.
11:36What excited you?
11:37What was the attraction?
11:38Because I'd been reading, we'd made a lot of period dramas set in the outback, and there were some wonderful,
11:43wonderful, wonderful Australian films, and which I loved.
11:46But this was like urban, contemporary, and it was Joss's particular take on the thing she'd written this really tight
11:52little psychological script with like a three hand or a funny perverted love triangle, with a blind photographer and like
12:01a kitchen hand and a housekeeper who's really kind of like a sadomasacre.
12:06Yes.
12:07Yes.
12:07Very angry.
12:08Anyway, I loved that film, loved working on it.
12:11It was a liberation for me, and it was a real challenge as well to actually imagine that state and
12:19to find that blindness on camera without it veering.
12:24And so normally you talk about taking an eyeline, well, we had to take an eyeline, yeah, but where would
12:31my eyeline be?
12:32Well, it would be there, so I'll look there.
12:35We had to try and find Martin's eyeline.
12:37But all of those technical things, I love a technical challenge.
12:43Hugo's indelible performance in Proof caught the attention of an ambitious young director, Stefan Elliott, who cast him as Tick
12:51in what has become an Australian classic, The Beloved Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
12:59I've no doubt you dream about the things you'll never do.
13:05And this blue-tongued lizard.
13:07Ah, yes.
13:08Must have been the most fun time on a set.
13:11Yeah, ridiculous amount of fun.
13:13Fantastic.
13:14Fantastic.
13:15Everyone was quite depressed when we finished.
13:18Oh, because it was over.
13:19Yeah, really.
13:21I remember bumping into people five months up on the street and Sydney going, and everybody's going,
13:29It's over.
13:31Well, Priscilla led to, oddly enough for me, and it might not sort of logically follow, but it led to
13:37this particular film,
13:39because the Wachowski brothers saw you in Priscilla and loved it.
13:42And it became a cultural landmark, probably one of those films that set the bar, really, for special effects, for
13:54a new way of talking about filmmaking, actually.
13:56This is from The Matrix.
13:58What is he doing?
14:00He's beginning to believe.
14:01So we've got here this kind of wire-foo meets dystopian Blade Runner type meeting between your character and Keanu
14:10Reeves.
14:10And it's gone into legend, really.
14:28You're empty.
14:30So are you.
14:42How many injuries off the back of that scene?
14:46Hilarious.
14:47Keanu and I did our stunts, but there were stuntmen on it as well.
14:50So one thing Keanu didn't do was to, I had to punch him in the chest and he flies back.
14:55And the stuntman did that flyback because it was on a wire and that guy, Darko, his name was, he
15:02flew back and was pulled and hit his head on a concrete, very low slung concrete thing.
15:07And there was blood pouring out the back of his head and his eyes were going wrong.
15:11Oh, my God.
15:11I thought he would die in front of me, but I couldn't move once I had my hair.
15:17Yes.
15:18So it ended up being fine.
15:20And then he came back on set the next day and like, but yeah, sequences like that can be dangerous.
15:26What's it like entering the world of filmmakers like the Wachowski brothers, who clearly had a complete vision and a
15:34really extraordinary one of the story they wanted to tell?
15:36I just liked them so much from the first time I met them.
15:41And the reason they, it's interesting because they've both now transitioned.
15:44Yes.
15:45So actually the reason why they wanted me to do it is because they love Priscilla.
15:51But they, and then they also, proof, they'd see me with the black glasses.
15:57There's something about proof.
15:58So your whole life was funneled towards the matrix.
16:00Agent Smith is that father is proof and mother is Priscilla.
16:05Priscilla and there's, there's, it's actually really hilarious.
16:10At the time I didn't realise that I knew they'd love Priscilla, but we got on, we got on very
16:15well and extremely well.
16:18And so I always felt they were really brilliant young filmmakers and they had each other's backs.
16:25And an enormous success.
16:27And, and life completely opened up for you in an acting sense in terms of, I imagine, you could do
16:34what you wanted to do there.
16:35Yeah, it, it opened lots of doors.
16:37There's certainly people knew who, who I was.
16:39So, so, so, you know, but then I just got lots of offers, the same sort of villains, the same
16:46sort of roles.
16:47Well, we've got one of them in here.
16:48Yeah.
16:48We've got good old V in there.
16:50Yeah.
16:51I loved working on V for Vendetta, because it was a, it, it came out of the matrix.
17:02That it's my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V.
17:05I'd done a lot of mask work at NIDA, for example.
17:08We literally did a class called mask.
17:10This is a fixed mask.
17:11Yes.
17:11And how do you animate that?
17:13Well, it needs to punctuate your sentences.
17:17So you actually need to move the mask and so whatever the key word is, it actually needs to, it
17:22actually needs to do the talking.
17:25Oh, right.
17:25Yeah.
17:26There's no court in this country for men like Prothera.
17:30And are you going to kill more people?
17:34Yes.
17:35So that's the technique of it.
17:36Yeah.
17:37But at the same time, it's all has to be about the voice because you don't see the face.
17:42And so what is he saying and what are the words doing?
17:45So it actually all is, it's all about text, really.
17:48Mm.
17:49Mm.
17:53Mm.
17:54Mm.
17:55Mm.
17:55Mm.
17:55Mm.
17:57Mm.
17:58Mm.
17:59Mm.
17:59Mm.
18:00Mm.
18:07All right.
18:08I know this is like a second home to you, this place.
18:11Yeah, I know this building very well.
18:14Yeah.
18:15Lots of great memories.
18:25One year.
18:36Now, Hugo, you know the Sydney Theatre Company incredibly well, but you might not have been
18:40down here.
18:41No.
18:41Which is a very special place.
18:43Thank you, Georgia.
18:44What do we keep down here?
18:47Archives.
18:47Archives.
18:48Archives.
18:49The archives of our lives.
18:51This is where we've got the Hugo Weaving history.
18:52The history is all here.
18:54Okay.
18:55For you, it's three playwrights, isn't it?
18:58Shakespeare, Beckett and Chekhov.
19:00I could just do it forever, you know?
19:02So, yeah.
19:04So, Beckett's huge.
19:06And this production, which of course started with the Sydney Theatre Company and then had
19:11an enormous successful transfer to London, you and Richard Roxburgh, you're Vladimir, he's
19:17Estragon.
19:18Look at you.
19:19They're both so beautiful together there.
19:20But here you are.
19:21Here we are.
19:22In full flight.
19:23Yeah.
19:23That was a wonderful production.
19:25Look at that.
19:26Wonderful.
19:27The joy.
19:28The pain and the agony.
19:32Is Waiting for Godot one of the best things the two of you have ever done together?
19:36Yeah.
19:36It was so hard.
19:39It was really grueling.
19:40I mean, yeah, it was.
19:43Well, that passed the time.
19:46How would you characterize Hugo's approach to work from watching him and from working with
19:51him?
19:51He dives very deep into the work and it's like it's really kind of, there's a cost for him.
20:00What do you think the cost is?
20:02If I remember the productions that I've worked with him on recently, on any break, his head
20:08is in the text.
20:11He's studying it as if kind of willing the meaning to come into him, into his spirit.
20:20It's not always a joy.
20:24So what distinguishes Hugo from his peers and other actors of his generation?
20:28I remember seeing him in a production of Arturo Ui at Sydney Theatre Company.
20:36What would you like to know?
20:38And his understanding of the craft of theatre and just his physical presence commanding that
20:47stage.
20:49Your preparation is about learning or reading everything you possibly can about the role
20:56or the character, whatever it might be for film or for stage.
20:59But I understand you don't at least initially learn the lines.
21:03That's not your initial approach.
21:05The good thing about rehearsal for the theatre is that you rehearse for five, six weeks, depending
21:10on the show.
21:11So during that period, that's the time when you're actually slowly, incrementally through
21:17osmosis, learning the lines and they're getting into your body and into your head.
21:23But by the time you get to performing it, all of that, you can't even think about any of
21:28it because you've just got to be doing it.
21:29Yes.
21:30And then the lines will just sort of, with the work, just start to inhabit, take their place
21:34in you, hopefully.
21:37Sometimes they don't.
21:46Long before Hugo gets to perform a role, he immerses himself in the writer's room, where
21:52plays are incubated.
21:53Here at the Sydney Theatre Company, he's in the early stages of development for a new Australian
21:59work called Malevolence.
22:01And he pushed and he pushed until no choice was there but to drop him where he stood.
22:07A man with any sort of decency, done what he'd done, would have nicked himself nice and
22:11simple.
22:12Job he's done.
22:13And so he went to visit his sister.
22:16Went to visit his sister.
22:18Went to visit his sister indeed.
22:23There's something about the particular language of the particular playwright that speaks to you
22:28in a way you don't quite understand.
22:30And eventually, over time, you start to ingest that.
22:33And that has an effect on you as a performer.
22:37And that's kind of what the thing is, the way the words are put together.
22:42They're on the page.
22:43You've got to get them into your body.
22:50As a consummate actor, a clue to understanding Hugo's immense passion and respect for his
22:56craft can be found here, in the smallest room of his art-filled house.
23:02I'm aware that this is just a handful of the collection of DVDs that you have.
23:07You are so old school.
23:08I am very old school.
23:10So there's all of these ones.
23:11So these are mostly like non-American or British films and not Australian.
23:16So they're generally not Anglo films.
23:19Yes.
23:19And Docco's up the top.
23:21Yes.
23:21And then there's all the Italians.
23:23Yes.
23:23German, Eastern European, French, French.
23:29Yeah.
23:30So anyway, the Iranian and Turkish and some TV done.
23:34Yeah.
23:34So it's like a little snapshot of some of the DVDs I have.
23:39Show me some key important films for you or some influences or something that matters
23:44a great deal.
23:45Well, here we go.
23:45Once Upon a Time and Anatolia.
23:47Your absolute favourite film.
23:48Your touchstone.
23:48This is the one that I keep going back to because I think he's so profoundly poetic.
23:53And so suggestive.
23:55And so ambiguous a lot of the time.
23:58And so tonally brilliant.
24:01Dark subjects have featured throughout Hugo's rich stage and screen career.
24:06And in his recent work, the psychologically complex characters that he's drawn to allow
24:12him to explore many different kinds of masculinities.
24:15In the genre bending The Rooster, he plays the deeply wounded and isolated Mitt.
24:21What line of work you in?
24:24Contemplation.
24:25The volatile and incompetent publican Billy in The Royal Hotel by one of Hugo's favourite
24:32directors, Kitty Green.
24:34Now you've got to slam it.
24:35The monstrous hitman father in the cult classic Slow Horses.
24:41I can always cut off your finger.
24:43They're all complex, flawed men.
24:46But one of his performances required entering the mind of a true monster.
24:52This is from Patrick Melrose, which is an extraordinary series of books, of course.
25:01And the character that you play is Patrick's father, David.
25:04In this scene, everything about this scene really indicates the horror that's about to come, really,
25:11from the dread camera movements to the contrast of beautiful classical piano being played by
25:17a man with awful intent.
25:19And, really, it makes us so frightened for little Patrick, just in all the details of what you do.
25:26Shall I pick you up by the ears?
25:29No.
25:30Come here.
25:44Now, let go.
25:45No.
25:45Let go and I'll drop you.
25:47No.
25:47Trust me.
25:49How do you do a role like that?
25:51How do you enter that character?
25:54Well, you're right, they're wonderful books.
25:57Wonderful, wonderful books.
25:58And incredible writing.
26:00Beautiful.
26:01And when I first went over to work on Patrick Melrose, one of the first people I met was
26:07Teddy St. Auburn.
26:08The author.
26:09Wrote the books.
26:09The writing of the books was his catharsis, really, like getting that story out of him.
26:17He needed to write it out because he'd had such a traumatic childhood.
26:21So, the first step to playing a monstrous character like that, and he was a monstrous human being,
26:27was understanding that he's a human being, understanding that there's monstrous things that happened to him, and also understanding that
26:34he was a brilliant piano player, actually was an incredible piano player, and he was a doctor, and he was
26:40very accomplished and very smart.
26:42Unfortunately, all those potential attributes were channeled into sadism.
26:48Sadism and misogyny.
26:51So, a monstrous human being.
26:54He gets to the heart of that person in just the most chilling but really connected way.
27:00Do you have a sense of how he does that?
27:03Probably by not sitting back and in judgment of the character, but he pairs that with an enormous intellect and
27:13an enormous capacity for emotional reach and intelligence.
27:23You've had an enormous, and are having an enormous stage and film career, but is there something else for you
27:30or something next that you've always wanted to do all day?
27:32I hope there's something else for me.
27:36Oh, look, yeah, there's, I mean, always the classics, like on stage, more Shakespeare, more Brecht, more Beckett, more, you
27:44know.
27:44You can't get enough.
27:45No, I could always, I could do that forever, and, yeah, one day maybe, maybe write and direct a film,
27:53but I've been pretending, or I've been trying to do that for years, and so maybe that'll happen.
27:58A little something on the boiler?
28:01Yeah, there's something sort of there, but it's, I'm the only one holding it back, so I have to grow
28:07up.
28:09Be brave.
28:10Yeah, exactly.
28:11I have to be brave.
28:12Well, it's a whole life of bravery, isn't it?
28:14I mean, it's again and again, renewing yourself up on the stage with another set of language and trying to
28:20tell another story.
28:21Yeah, but then the thing is, as an actor, so you say yes to something, and then you're part of
28:26a group, which is wonderful.
28:27It's a collaborative thing.
28:28But, so I'm then forced to learn my lines, and I'm forced to get up on stage on opening night.
28:34But with, if it's your own project, then that's a different sort of bravery.
28:39Yes.
28:39So we'll see, we'll see whether I get there.
28:42That's a very different spotlight.
28:43Yeah, that's right, yeah.
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