Hugo Weaving AO (b. 1960), actor, spent his childhood in England, Australia and South Africa before returning to live in Australia in 1976. Graduating from NIDA in 1981, he made his television debut in the 1984 series Bodyline. After appearing with Nicole Kidman in Bangkok Hilton (1989) he gained critical acclaim for his performance in Proof (1991), winning the AFI Best Actor Award. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) and Babe (1995) helped him to establish an international reputation and between 1999 and 2003 he starred as Agent Smith in the blockbuster The Matrix and its two sequels. He played the elf-king Elrond in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003) before appearing in the in the radically different Australian film Little Fish (2005). His career is characterised by such variation. Weaving first appeared with the Sydney Theatre Company in 1982, and has since worked on more than twenty of its productions. In 2006 he and Cate Blanchett acted in the company's Hedda Gabler in New York. He won a Helen Hayes award for Uncle Vanya in Washington DC in 2012. His subsequent film and television productions include Hacksaw Ridge (2016), Jasper Jones and Seven Types of Ambiguity (2017), Measure for Measure and Hearts and Bones (2019), and Lone Wolf (2021).
