- 2 hours ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
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
00:15most un-Hollywood Hollywood star that I'll ever meet because staying grounded here in Australia
00:20has been so important to you hasn't it? There's so much putting on other faces when you're an
00:25actor anyway I sort of felt like being grounded in place and a particular culture was 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. You have
01:33only one choice. He starred in some of the biggest Hollywood franchises of modern times but is also a
01:40hero of Australian theatre, a master of transformation and someone who has made both the good guy and the
01:47villain his own. I'm thrilled to be unashamedly celebrating the art of making because we are a
01:55country 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
02:19hood. Yep. Woolloomooloo. Used to live in Cathedral Street. Long time ago. Well I think we should do the
02:25thing that you and I most love doing which is walking. 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. When
02:47by the time I
02:48came back here and went to drama school here in the post Whitlam era where we were celebrating who we
02:54are and what our culture is and our stories, that was something that I sort of was born into as
03:00a young
03:01actor and that to me is still what I do I think. Even though now I think times have changed
03:08so much, um younger
03:10actors tend to want to go to Hollywood but I've always felt that working here telling stories from
03:18here whether it's on stage or on screen or on small screen is like critical to me feeling like I
03:24I 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
03:46at the Sydney Theatre Company at the drama theatre there because that was the only place that back then
03:51they performed um which was yeah it's not a not a bad office. It's not a bad office at all.
03:57The other
03:58really important part in your career of this area in this city city of Sydney was that it was your
04:03co-star in the massive movie The Matrix and The Matrix franchise. Yeah well that's right Matrix was filmed
04:09here um all three of them were actually but the first one was big and it was a big because
04:15Fox Studios
04:16had just opened and so it was like the first film in there. Of course it made a huge
04:20splash around the world as a film and it was technologically like you know really breaking
04:27new ground amazing and a wonderful role for me so yeah it was great and and Sydney was the backdrop
04:33but of course that building was never seen so it's 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. My parents um moved to West Africa
05:02and then my dad had a job um working as a seismologist for a company discovering oil countries schools
05:10houses, houses, friends, language like everything would change but um there was a sense that everywhere we went was like
05:20wonderfully new and different and
05:22so I I really value my childhood. There's um there's there's chubby cheek me and my mum who's now 91
05:34and
05:34um she's great and um she's great and my brother Simon but yes very much very very grounded very um
05:43very supportive very very loving um 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 it was a hot house in a
06:03way in the sense
06:04that you're working every day nine to five uh at school learning I love learning reading plays and then
06:12second and third year particularly putting on a lot of work I think it was just a massive liberation and
06:20affirmation of what I was kind of leaning to and what I really wanted to do and I had a
06:24sort of stupid
06:25confidence I don't feel particularly confident as a human being but at that age I thought oh I can do
06:32anything
06:34so how did the two of you meet? I just started uni he was doing his final year at NIDA
06:40and they toured their
06:44end of NIDA uh production of Twelfth Night and I just I looked at his name and I checked him
06:52out and
06:53I always thought wow one day it would be great to meet that guy and maybe who knows work with
06:59him
07:02Hugo's working life has always been in the theatre and on the stage but Australian television opened the
07:09door to life on the screen. Byron Kennedy and George Miller asked Hugo to play the controversial English
07:16cricket captain Douglas Jardine in Bodyline the celebrated television series on the controversial
07:231932 Ashes tour. I owe George a lot actually and George and Byron and George Obelby who taught me at
07:32NIDA also directed some of Bodyline and he was the one who I think recommended me to George Miller and
07:39Byron.
07:40What's interesting to me is that there's a through line through your work of you always wanting to find
07:46not only 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 as the
07:57English captain but you found you found elements in him. I have no doubt that history will remember
08:03you as a man who stooped to conquer well history has already forgotten you
08:10he's a patrician Englishman yes he's of a certain class it's easy to to make him the villain and even
08:18Kennedy Miller made him into the of course well you had to have one but I'm always going I know
08:22you
08:23guys want to make him the villain but and I accept that that's part of what we're doing Bradman's the
08:28hero Jardine's the villain but I'm not gonna go the whole hog and they wrote him as a fully functioning
08:36grounded human being. Were there any key lessons because you were a relatively young actor then
08:42from the Kennedy Miller years? George Whaley my acting teacher at NIDA had had said when you're on
08:48when you're in front of the camera just cut everything by 80 percent which is like terrible
08:52advice but that was the sort of thinking you just just do this mumble and don't move your face
08:58and you know that's real sort of thing um which I've actually like well I keep trying to challenge
09:05that so through osmosis I slowly learned a bit more about film acting but I think it took honestly
09:12took about 10 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're a star in your father's super
09:24eight films of a very young age. Yes so my dad was given a camera as a wedding present by
09:31his dad
09:32so he had his camera and he was filming us as we were growing up little kids traveling all over
09:38the
09:38world everything he filmed on eight millimeter it wasn't even super eight he would send back to his dad
09:44in Chelten in England his and then his dad would get it developed and then he would screen that for
09:50the
09:50family and they would all the relatives and they'd see the sort of latest information from the you
09:58know the grandkids so therefore every holiday we had or sometimes on a sunday around the pool in
10:04south africa or wherever my dad would be filming us well this is a really important bit of filmmaking in
10:12your career but also a really wonderful example of terrible acting your early terrible acting
10:20i was going to say the opposite actually okay this is from proof and it's where we see your wonderful
10:27prickly mistrustful character of martin making his outrageous demand of russell crowe that he provide
10:34evidence proof of everything that he's seen i'll make it a bit easier for you andy try five different
10:39ways to describe how the cat looks and it really is almost perverse demand that he's asking um dead
10:51limp sick limp andy holding limp cat in waiting room of vet nine words the photograph
11:01is that the right way up yeah
11:16what are you doing
11:19i'm labeling it why proof
11:26of what that what's in the photograph is what was there it was the first time i read something
11:33that was really exciting to me what excited you what was the attraction i've been reading
11:39we've made a lot of period dramas set in the outback and there was some wonderful wonderful wonderful
11:44australian films and which i loved but this was like urban contemporary and it was joss's particular take
11:50on the thing she'd written this really tight little psychological script with like a three hand or
11:55a funny a funny perverted love triangle what with a blind photographer and like a kitchen hand and
12:02a and a and a housekeeper who's really kind of like a sadomasseker yes it's like very angry i love
12:09that i loved working on it it was a liberation for me and it was a real challenge as well
12:14to
12:15to actually imagine that state and to find that blindness on camera without it veering so normally
12:26you talk about taking an eye line well we had to take uh an eye line yeah but where would
12:31my eye line be well
12:32it would be there so i'll look there we had to try and yes find martin's eye line but all
12:38of those technical
12:39things i love a technical challenge hugo's indelible performance in proof caught the attention of an
12:47ambitious young director stefan elliott who cast him as tick in what has become an australian classic
12:55the beloved adventures of priscilla queen of the desert i've no doubt you dream about the things you'll
13:03never do and this blue-tongued lizard uh yes must have been the most fun time on a set yeah
13:11a
13:11ridiculous amount of fun fantastic fantastic everyone was quite depressed when we finished
13:17oh because it was over because yeah yeah really i remember bumping into people five months up on the
13:24street in the sydney game and everybody's going oh it's over yeah well priscilla led to oddly enough
13:34for me it might not sort of logically follow but um it led to this particular film because the wachowski
13:39brothers saw you in priscilla and loved it and it became a cultural landmark uh probably one of those
13:49films that set the bar really for special effects for a new way of talking about filmmaking actually
13:56this is from the matrix what is he doing he's beginning to believe so we've got here this kind
14:03of wire foo meets dystopian blade runner type meeting between your character and keanu reeves and it's gone
14:11to legend really you're empty so are you
14:41how many how many injuries off the back of that scene hilarious keanu and i did our stunts but there
14:49were stuntmen on it as well so one thing keanu didn't do was to um i had to punch him
14:54in the chest
14:54and he flies back and the stuntman did that fly back because it was on a wire and that guy
15:00daco his
15:01name was he flew back and was pulled and hit his head on a concrete very low slung concrete thing
15:07and
15:07there was blood pouring out the back of his head and his eyes were going wrong i thought he would
15:13died in front of me and but i couldn't move once i had my hair yes so it ended up
15:20being fine and then
15:21he came back on set the next day and like but yeah sequences like that can be dangerous what's it
15:27like
15:27entering 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 i just liked them so much from the first
15:40time i met them and the reason they it's interesting because they both now transitioned yes so actually
15:46the reason why they wanted me to do it is because they love priscilla but they and and then they
15:53also
15:54proof they'd see me with the black glasses there's something about so your whole life was funneled
16:00towards agent smith is that father is proof and mother is is priscilla and uh it's actually really
16:09hilarious but at the time i didn't realize that i knew they'd love priscilla but we got on we got
16:15on
16:15very well and um extremely well and so i always felt they were really brilliant uh young filmmakers and
16:24had each other's backs and an enormous success and and life completely opened up for you in an acting
16:31sense in terms of i imagine you could do what you wanted to do there yeah it opened lots of
16:37doors
16:37there certainly people knew who who i was so so you know but then i just got lots of offers
16:42the same sort
16:43of villains villains same sort of roles well we got one of them in here yeah good old v in
16:49there yeah
16:51i loved working on v for vendetta because it was a it came out of the matrix
17:02that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me v i've done a lot of
17:06mask work at nida
17:07for example we literally did a class called mask this is a fixed mask yes and how do you animate
17:13that
17:13well it needs to punctuate your sentences so you actually need to move the mask and so whatever the
17:20key word is actually needs to it actually needs to do land with talking all right yeah there's no
17:27court in this country for men like prothera and are you going to kill more people yes so that's the
17:36technique of it but at the same time it's all has to be about the voice because you don't see
17:41the face
17:42and so what is he saying and what are the words doing so it actually all is it's all about
17:46text
18:07really
18:08all right i know this is like a second home to you this place yeah i know this building very
18:13well
18:14yeah lots of great memories
18:36now hugo you know the sydney theatre company incredibly well but you might not have been down
18:40here no which is a very special place thank you georgia where what do we keep down here
18:47archives archives the archives of our lives this is where we've got the hugo weaving history is all
18:53here okay for you it's it's three playwrights isn't it shakespeare beckett and checkoff i could just do
19:01forever you know so yes so we arrive at beckett's huge and this production uh which of course started
19:09with the sydney theatre company and then had an enormous successful transfer to london you and
19:15richard roxburgh you're vladimir he's estragon look at them so beautiful together there but here you are
19:21in full flight yeah that was a wonderful production look at that wonderful the joy the pain and the agony
19:32is waiting for god o one of the best things the two of you have ever done together
19:36yeah it was so hard it was really i mean yeah it was well that passed the time how would
19:46you
19:47characterize hugo's approach to work from watching him and from working with him he dives very deep
19:53into the work and it's like it's really kind of there's a cost for him what do you think the
20:01cost
20:01is if i remember the productions that i've worked with him on recently on any break his head is in
20:08the text he's studying it as if kind of willing the meaning to come into him into his spirit it's
20:20not
20:21always a joy so what distinguishes hugo from his peers and other actors of his generation i remember
20:30seeing him in a in a production of uh arturo at sydney theater company what would you like to know
20:38and
20:38his understanding of the craft of theater and just his physical presence commanding that stage
20:49your preparation is about learning or reading everything you possibly can about the the role
20:56the character whatever it might be for film or for stage but i understand you don't at least
21:01initially learn the lines that's not your initial approach the good thing about rehearsal
21:06for the theater is that you rehearse for five six weeks depending on the show so during that period
21:12that's the time when you're actually slowly incrementally through osmosis learning the lines and
21:19they're they're getting into your body and into your head but by the time you get to performing
21:25it all of that just you can't even think about any of it because you've just got to be doing
21:29it
21:29yes and then the lines will just sort of with the work just start to inhabit
21:33it take take their place in you hopefully sometimes they don't
21:46long before hugo gets to perform a role he immerses himself in the writer's room where plays
21:52are incubated here at the sydney theater company he's in the early stages of development for a new
21:58australian work called malevolence and he pushed and he pushed until no choice was there but to
22:05drop him where he stood a man with any sort of decency done what he done would have nicked himself
22:11nice
22:11and simple job he's done and so he went to visit his sister went to visit his sister went to
22:18visit his
22:19sister indeed
22:23there's something about the particular language of the particular playwright that speaks to you in a
22:28way you don't quite understand and eventually over time you start to ingest that and that has
22:34an effect on on you as a performer and that's kind of what the thing is the the way the
22:40words are
22:41put together they're on the page you'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 craft
22:57can 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 you are so old
23:08school i am very old school okay so there's all of these ones so these are mostly like non-american
23:14or british films and not not australian so they're generally not anglo films yes and docos up the top
23:21yes and then there's all the italians yes german eastern european french french
23:29yeah so anyway the the iranian and turkish and it has some tv done yeah so it's like a little
23:35a little
23:36snap shot of some of the dvds i have show me some key key important films for you or some
23:42influences or
23:44something matters there we go once upon a time your absolute favorite film this is the one that
23:49i keep going back to because i think he's so profoundly poetic and so suggestive and so
23:56ambiguous a lot of the time and and so tonally brilliant dark subjects have featured throughout
24:03hugo's rich stage and screen career and in his recent work the psychologically complex characters that
24:10he's drawn to allow him to explore many different kinds of masculinities in the genre bending the
24:17rooster he plays the deeply wounded and isolated myth what line of work you're in contemplation
24:26the volatile and incompetent publican billy in the royal hotel by one of hugo's favorite directors kitty
24:33green now you gotta slam it the monstrous hitman father in the cult classic slow horses i can always
24:42cut off your finger they're all complex flawed men but one of his performances required entering the mind
24:50of a true monster this is from patrick melrose which is an extraordinary series of books of course
24:59uh and the character that you play is patrick's father david in this scene everything about this
25:08scene really indicates the the horror that's about to come really from the the dread camera movements to
25:13the the contrast of beautiful classical piano being played by a man with awful intent and really it makes
25:20us so frightened for little patrick just in all the details of what you do shall i pick you up
25:28by the ears
25:29no come here ready
25:43now let go no let go and i'll drop you no trust me how do you do a role like
25:50that how do you enter that
25:51character well at use you're right they're wonderful books wonderful wonderful books and um
25:59incredible writing beautiful and when i first went over to work on on patrick melrose um one of the
26:06first people i met was teddy st dauben the author wrote the books the writing of the books was his
26:11catharsis really like getting that story out out of him and needed to write it out because he'd had such
26:19a traumatic childhood so the first step to playing a monstrous character like that and he's a
26:25was a monstrous human being was understanding that he's a human being understanding that there's
26:31monstrous things that happened to him and also understanding that he was a brilliant piano player
26:36actually was an incredible piano player and he was a doctor and he was very accomplished and very smart
26:42unfortunately all those potential attributes were channeled into into sadism and misogyny
26:51so a monstrous human being he gets to the heart of that person in just the most chilling but really
26:59connected way do you have a sense of how he does that probably by not not uh sitting back in
27:06and
27:07in judgment of the character but he pairs that with a with an enormous intellect and an enormous capacity
27:15for emotional reach and intelligence
27:23you've had an enormous and are having an enormous stage and film career but is there something else
27:30for you or something next that you've always wanted to do i hope there's something else for me
27:35um oh look yeah there's i mean always the classics like on stage more shakespeare more more brecht more
27:43beckett more you know you can't get enough no i could always i could do that forever and yeah one
27:50day maybe uh maybe run direct a film but i've been pretending i've been trying to do that for years
27:56and
27:56so maybe that'll happen a little something on the boiler yeah there's something sort of there but it's
28:04i'm the only one holding it back so i have to grow up
28:09be brave yeah yeah exactly i have to be well it's a whole life of bravery isn't it i mean
28:14it's again
28:15and again renewing yourself up on the stage with another set of language and trying to tell another
28:20story yeah but then the the thing is as an actor so you say yes to something and then you're
28:25part of
28:26a group which is wonderful it's a collaborative thing but uh so i i i'm then forced to learn my
28:31lines
28:31and i'm forced to get up on stage on opening night but with if it's your own project then that's
28:37a
28:38different sort of bravery so we'll see we'll see whether i get there that's a very different spotlight
28:43yeah that's right yeah
Comments