Spotlight On: Hugo Weaving

This week's spotlight is on one of my favorite actors, Mr. Hugo Weaving. You often see him playing super serious and sometimes villainous characters. This, I am guessing, is mostly due to his great speaking voice. Along with his live action acting, he has also done some great voice-over work playing characters like a sheepdog in Babe or a giant evil robot in Transformers. He is an actor who when I see his name attached to a project, I know that it is going to be very interesting. Here are some of my favorite films of his.

Proof

In Proof, Weaving plays a blind man who takes photographs of the things around him and has people describe what they are of. I remember being amazed when I first saw this movie because Weaving gives a very convincing performance of a blind man. He recieved a well-deserved Australian Film Institute Award for this film.


The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

If you are familiar with Weaving's more recent work, this film will seem waaaaay different from everything that he has every done. I'm not positive, but I am pretty sure that this is the only movie where he smiles and laughs and isn't completely stonefaced. This is one of my favorite performances of his where he plays a drag queen bussing across the Australian outback with his two friends so that they can go perform a drag show in his wife's business.




The Matrix

It is in The Matrix where Hugo portrays one of his most famous villains. All he has to do is say "Mr. Anderson" and he is creepy as hell. I have only ever seen the first Matrix movie, but from what I hear, that is the only one worth seeing. An interesting little fact: a bunch of people put up these flyers around campus that were talking about FBI raids and they all had that picture of Weaving as Agent Smith. So for a few weeks wherever I went I was seeing Hugo Weaving.



Lord of the Rings

In Lord of the Rings, Hugo Weaving plays Elrond, who is the father of Arwen and the Lord of Rivendell. It is another role where Weaving gets to show off his great voice and his super serious face. Unfornately, I couldn't find any film clips that I could embed, but if you go to Youtube there are tons of videos....

V for Vendetta

This is by far my favorite role of his. He delivers such a great performance and you never even see his face. I honestly don't think anyone else could have made this role as great as it was.



Transformers

I swear, Hugo Weaving has been involved in some of the biggest film franchises (except for Star Wars, of course...) In Transformers he does the voice of Megatron, leader of the Deceptacons. Apparently it was a big controversy that Weaving did the voice instead of the original guy, but seriously, who are you going to get who is better than Hugo Weaving?



The Wolfman

It didn't get the best reviews, but I love this movie!!! Weaving again plays the antagonist, but this time he is playing a good guy antagonist. He plays the man who is trying to track down the Wolfman. I swear, all you have to do is have Weaving say someones name and it sounds amazing. "Mr. Talbot" "Mr. Anderson." "Evey...E...V...of course you are."



Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

Weaving voices two different owls in this film. He plays the main character's father as well as an owl that works for the Pure Ones so that one day his family will be set free. Although I think that Weaving has the greatest voice, I really wish that he didn't play both roles because they are both obviously him...



Future projects: Weaving is going to play Elrond again in The Hobbit, play Megatron again in the next Transformers movies, and also play Red Skull in Captain America. That is the one that I am really excited for...