Hugo Weaving

Weaving was born in Nigeria to English parents and raised largely in Australia, training at Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art before building a substantial career in Australian theater and film through the 1980s.

Agent Smith's contemptuous drawl — half newsreader, half snake — created a villain as quotable as the heroes. "Mis-ter Anderson." He developed Smith's distinctive clipped cadence partly by studying the flat, hostile tone of DMV and immigration officials he'd encountered in real life, a deliberately mundane inspiration for such an unsettling character.

He reprised the role across all three original Matrix films and later became one of the most recognizable character actors in blockbuster cinema through the Lord of the Rings trilogy, building an unusually long career playing memorable villains and supporting characters across multiple major franchises.