It turns out that the popular actor doesn’t much care about his roles in science fiction and fantasy films.
Hugo Weaving is probably best known for his role in the Matrix as Agent Smith, and while that was his first big sci-fi role, he’s made the genres a part of his career.
He went on to play a Elrond in The Lord of the Rings, V in V for Vendetta – though you don’t get to see his face in that one, Inspector Frederick Abberline in The Wolfman, and Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avenger.
He’s also done a few roles as only a voice, like Megatron from the Transformers films and a couple of owls in Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. Of course, he’s got some dramatic roles mixed in there as well, but they are mostly relatively obscure titles
According to a new interview over at Collider, however, Weaving doesn’t take these roles very seriously. He was being interviewed primarily about his role in the upcoming Cloud Atlas and Hobbit films. In the latter he reprises his role as Elrond, but he freely admits that he really doesn’t know much about Middle Earth, and isn’t even sure what’s going on with the production of the films.
“I was truly there for four or five weeks and enjoyed myself, and went home again,” he said of the experience in New Zealand. He’s even more dismissive of his role in Transformers, brushing it off as “a two-hour voice job, while I was doing other things … I just went in and did it. I never read the script. I just have my lines, and I don’t know what they mean.”
He admits right away that that sounds bad, and implies that he usually doesn’t take jobs that he cares so little about.
The real surprise in the interview is how he feels about his role in the Marvel Film Universe. After reprising his roles in The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings so many times, he doesn’t think he can do the same for Captain America.
“It’s not something I would want to do again,” he said candidly. “I’m glad I did it. I did sign up for a number of pictures and I suppose, contractually, I would be obliged to, if they forced me to, but they wouldn’t want to force someone to do it, if they didn’t want to.”
Ironically, we recently learned that Natalie Portman is being ‘forced’ into her contractual role as the romantic lead in Thor 2, another Marvel Film Universe sequel, despite a desire to back out.
“I think I’ve done my dash with that sort of film,” he continued. “It was good to do it and try it out, but to be honest, it’s not the sort of film I seek out and really am excited by.”
By “that sort of film” one can only guess what he means, as any descriptor we could give to the film is something he’s already done before. It’s not his first comics adaptation, it’s not his first super hero film, and it’s not his first villain role, it’s far from his first film which is heavy in choreographed action sequences or special effects. Perhaps he’s specifically referencing the use of the modern adaptation of a golden aged super hero, but that’s pretty specific.
Of course, his answers show that he doesn’t really know that much about the Marvel films anyhow, as it’s clear that bringing a villain back is not a problem for the studio.
If you’re interested you can check out more of what Weaving had to say in the interview here.
Weaving can be seen in Cloud Atlas on October 26th, 2012 and in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on December 14th, 2012.
