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Short filmTranscript
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
00:19in Australia has been so important to you hasn't it? There's so much putting on other faces when
00:25you're an actor anyway I sort of felt like being grounded in place and a particular culture is
00:30really important. And your roles are so diverse are there key elements to a character that might
00:36draw you to it? I'm not really drawn to heroes and even though I played a lot of villains I'm
00:43not
00:43really drawn to black and white types so I'm interested in complex human psychologies and
00:52complex human relationships. And I've finally found someone who loves a good long walk like me.
00:57Yes. We'll go for a walk shall we? A nice long walk. Yeah let's do that. Okay I'll see you
01:02soon.
01:05I'm Virginia Trioli and I've spent my life paying attention to creative Australians
01:10and wondering what is going on in that wild mind of theirs. In this series I'll showcase artists and
01:17performers at the peak of their powers and tell the story of their triumphs, their stumbles and why
01:23they make the glorious work we love so much. Hugo Weaving is one of Australia's most recognizable
01:30and internationally successful actors. You have only one choice. He starred in some of the biggest
01:36Hollywood franchises of modern times but is also a hero of Australian theatre, a master of transformation
01:44and someone who has made both the good guy and the villain his own. I'm thrilled to be unashamedly
01:52celebrating the art of making because 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 a long time ago. Well I think we should do the thing
02:25that you and I most love doing which is walking.
02:28Let'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.
02:47When, by the time I came back here and went to drama school here in the post Whitlam era where
02:53we were celebrating who we are and what our culture is and our stories. Yeah.
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.
03:12Hmm. But I've always felt that working here, telling stories from here whether it's on stage or on screen or
03:20on small screen is like critical to me feeling like I have a place and I'm a part of a
03:27larger 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.
03:49Because that was the only place that back then they 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. Amazing, 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.
04:57My parents moved to West Africa and then my dad had a job working as a seismologist for a company
05:07discovering oil. Countries, schools, houses, friends, language, like everything would change.
05:17But there was a sense that everywhere we went was like wonderfully new and different. And so I really value
05:25my childhood.
05:27There's your mum. There's your chubby cheek me. And my mum, who's now 91 and she's great. And my brother,
05:36Simon.
05:37But yes, very much, very, 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.
05:56I went to the University of New South Wales at NIDA, 22 kids. It was a hothouse in a way,
06:03in the sense that you're working every day, nine to five, at school learning.
06:09I love learning, reading plays, and then second and third year particularly putting on a lot of work.
06:16I 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.
06:23And I had a sort of stupid confidence. I don't feel particularly confident as a human being.
06:29But 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.
06:40And they toured their end of NIDA production of Twelfth Night.
06:49And I just, I looked at his name and I checked him out.
06:53And I always thought, wow, one day it would be great to meet that guy and maybe, who knows, work
06:58with him.
07:02Hugo's working life has always been in the theatre and on the stage.
07:07But Australian television opened the door to life on the screen.
07:12Byron Kennedy and George Miller asked Hugo to play the controversial English cricket captain Douglas Jardine
07:18in Body Line, the celebrated television series on the controversial 1932 Ashes tour.
07:25I owe George a lot, actually, and George and Byron.
07:29And George Obelby, who taught me at NIDA, also directed some of Body Line.
07:34And 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,
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 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 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.
08:22But I'm always going, I know you guys want to make him the villain, but I accept that that's part
08:27of what we're doing.
08:28And Bradman'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, rounded 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,
08:47When you're on, when you're in front of the camera, just cut everything by 80%.
08:51Which was like terrible advice.
08:53But that was the sort of thinking, you just, just...
08:56Do less.
08:57...mumble and don't move your face.
08:59Is that for real?
09:01Sort of thing.
09:02Which I've actually like, well, I keep trying to challenge that.
09:05So, through osmosis, I slowly learnt a bit more about film acting.
09:11But I think it took, honestly, took about 10 years for me to really, really sort of start to feel
09:17comfortable 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 8
09:24films 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,
09:51and they would, all the relatives would go around, and they'd see the sort of latest information from the, you
09:58know, the grandkids.
10:00So, 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. Your 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,
10:30making his outrageous demand of Russell Crowe that he provide evidence-proof of everything that he's seen.
10:36I'll make it a bit easier for you, Andy. Try five different ways to describe how the cat looks.
10:41And it really is an almost perverse demand that he's asking.
10:45Um...
10:46Dead.
10:50Limp.
10:52Sick.
10:52Limp.
10:54Andy holding limp cat in waiting room of vet.
10:59Nine words. The 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? What was the attraction?
11:38I think because I've been reading...
11:39We've made a lot of period dramas set in the outback, and there were some wonderful, wonderful, wonderful Australian films,
11:45which I loved.
11:46But this was like urban, contemporary, and it was Joss's particular take on the thing.
11:51And she'd written this really tight little psychological script with like a three hand or a funny perverted love triangle.
11:59With a blind photographer and like a kitchen hand and a housekeeper who's really kind of like a sadomasacre.
12:06Yes.
12:07Very angry.
12:08Anyway.
12:08I loved that film.
12:10Loved 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...
12:25So normally you talk about taking an eye line.
12:28Well, we had to take an eye line.
12:30Yeah, but where would my eye line be?
12:32Well, it would be there, so I'll look there.
12:34We had to try and find Martin's eye line.
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,
12:50who cast him as Tick in what has become an Australian classic,
12:54The Beloved Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
12:58I'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. Fantastic.
13:14Fantastic. Everyone was quite depressed when we finished.
13:18Oh, because it was over.
13:19Yeah, really.
13:21I remember bumping into people five months out on the street,
13:24and Sidney going, and everybody's going...
13:29It's over.
13:31Yeah.
13:31Well, Priscilla led to...
13:33Oddly enough, I mean, it might not sort of logically follow,
13:36but it led to this particular film,
13:39because the Wachowski brothers saw you in Priscilla and loved it.
13:42And it became a cultural landmark.
13:48Probably one of those films that set the bar, really, for special effects,
13:53for a 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
14:08between your character and Keanu Reeves.
14:10And it's gone into legend, really.
14:27You're empty.
14:30So are you.
14:42How many injuries off the back of that scene?
14:45It's hilarious.
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...
14:52I had to punch him in the chest and he flies back,
14:55and the stuntman did that fly back because it was on a wire.
14:59And that guy, Darko, his name was, he flew back and was pulled
15:03and hit his head on a concrete, very low-slung concrete thing,
15:07and there was blood pouring out the back of his head
15:10and his eyes were going wrong.
15:11I thought he would die in front of me,
15:15but I couldn't move once I had my hair.
15:17So it ended up being fine.
15:20And then he came back on set the next day and, like...
15:23But, yeah, sequences like that can be dangerous.
15:26What's it like entering the world of filmmakers'
15:29like the Wachowski brothers,
15:30who clearly had a complete vision,
15:33and a really extraordinary one,
15:35of 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...
15:42It's interesting, because they've both now transitioned.
15:44Yes.
15:45So, actually, the reason why they wanted me to do it
15:49was because they loved Priscilla.
15:51Yeah.
15:51But they...
15:52And then, also, proof, they'd see me with the black glasses.
15:57There's something about...
15:58So your whole life was funnelled towards the Matrix.
16:00Yeah, Agent Smith is that father is proof
16:03and mother is Priscilla.
16:05And, uh...
16:06There's a...
16:08It's actually really hilarious.
16:10That's really...
16:11But at the time I didn't realise that.
16:12I knew they'd love Priscilla,
16:14but we got on...
16:15We got on very well.
16:16And, um, extremely well.
16:18And so I always felt they were really brilliant,
16:22young filmmakers, and they had each other's backs.
16:25And an enormous success.
16:27Yeah.
16:28And life completely opened up for you in an acting sense,
16:31in terms of, I imagine,
16:34you could do what you wanted to do there.
16:35Yeah.
16:36It opened lots of doors.
16:37And certainly people knew who I was.
16:40So, you know...
16:41But then I just got lots of offers.
16:43The same sort of...
16:45Villains.
16:45The same sort of roles.
16:46Well, we 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
16:53because it was a...
16:54It came out of The Matrix.
17:02That it's my very good honour to meet you,
17:04and 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.
17:12And how do you animate that?
17:13Well, it needs to punctuate your sentences.
17:17So you actually need to move the mask and...
17:19So whatever the key word is,
17:21it actually needs to...
17:22It actually needs to do the...
17:24Land with...
17:24Talking.
17:25Oh, right, yeah.
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,
17:38it all has to be about the voice
17:40because you don't see the face,
17:42and so what is he saying,
17:44and what are the words doing?
17:45So it actually is all about text, really.
18:07All right, I know this is like a second home to you, this place.
18:10Yeah, I know this building very well.
18:14Yeah.
18:15Lots of great memories.
18:36Now, Hugo, you know the Sydney Theatre Company incredibly well,
18:39but you might not have been down here.
18:41No.
18:41Which is a very special place.
18:43Thank you, Georgia.
18:44Where...
18:45What do we keep down here?
18:47Archives.
18:47Archives.
18:48The archives of our lives.
18:51This is where we've got...
18:51The Hugo-weaving history is all here.
18:54OK.
18:55For you, it's three playwrights, isn't it?
18:58Shakespeare, Beckett and Chekhov.
19:00I could just do forever, you know?
19:02So, yeah, so...
19:04We arrive at Beckett.
19:04Beckett's huge.
19:05Yeah.
19:06And this production, which of course started with the Sydney Theatre Company
19:10and then had an enormous successful transfer to London.
19:14Yeah.
19:14You and Richard Roxburgh.
19:16You're Vladimir.
19:17Here's Estragon.
19:18Look at them.
19:19They're so beautiful together there.
19:21Right.
19:21But 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.
19:37It was so hard.
19:38It was really gruelling.
19:40I mean, yeah, it was.
19:43Well, that passed the time.
19:46How would you characterise Hugo's approach to work, from watching him and from working
19:51with him?
19:51He dives very deep into the work.
19:54And 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.
20:21Hmm.
20:23So 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.
20:37What would you like to know?
20:38And his understanding of the craft of theatre and just his physical presence commanding that
20:47stage.
20:49You're 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.
20:59Yeah.
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.
21:23Mm.
21:24But by the time you get to performing it, all of that, you can't even think about any
21:27of it 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.
21:35Hopefully.
21:36Sometimes 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.
21:54Here at the Sydney Theatre Company, he's in the early stages of development for a new
21:59Australian work 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 done would have necked himself nice and simple.
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
22:28you in a way you don't quite understand and 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, 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
22:56can 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.
23:07Yes.
23:07You are so old school.
23:08I am very old school.
23:09Yes, so there's all of these ones.
23:12So these are mostly like non-American or British films and not Australian.
23:16So they're generally not Anglo films.
23:19Yes.
23:19And docos 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 it has some TV done.
23:34Yeah.
23:34So it's like a little, a little snapshot of some of the DVDs I have.
23:39Show me some key, key important films for you or some influences or something that matters
23:44a great deal.
23:45Here we go.
23:46Once Upon a Time 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 and so ambiguous a lot of the time and 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 him
24:12to 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 a 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?
25:30No.
25:30Come here.
25:32Come here.
25:36Ready?
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 and incredible writing.
26:00Beautiful.
26:01And when I first went over to work on Patrick Melrose, one of the first people I met was Teddy
26:08St. Aubyn.
26:08The author.
26:09Who wrote the books.
26:09The writing of the books was his catharsis, really.
26:13Like, getting that story out of him and needed to write it out because he 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.
26:33And also understanding that he was a brilliant piano player, actually was an incredible piano player,
26:38and he was a doctor, and he was very accomplished and very smart.
26:42Unfortunately, all those potential attributes were channelled into sadism 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 judgement of the character,
27:08but he pairs that with an enormous intellect and an enormous capacity for emotional reach and intelligence.
27:23You've had an enormous, and are having an enormous stage and film career.
27:28But is there something else for you or something next that you've always wanted to do?
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.
27:45You can't get enough.
27:45No, I could always, I could do that forever.
27:48And, yeah, one day maybe, maybe write and direct a film, but I've been pretending, or I've been trying to
27:55do that for years.
27:56And 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.
28:13Well, 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.
28:44Yeah.
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