Sun Herald

The Diary
Annette Sharp
August 12, 2007 

IT'S the sort of outing fathers and sons usually knock over during the son's formative years.

But Hugo Weaving's formative years were very busy ones - and it's never really too late for a father and son to enjoy a day at the zoo.

Wallace Weaving, father of 47-year-old actor Hugo, seemed happy to be enjoying his famous son's company at Taronga Zoo last week, even as autograph hunters clamoured around the star of films The Matrix and The Lord Of The Rings.

Hugo, a noted animal-lover and activist, took the opportunity to take his father, a retired seismologist, to the zoo during a rare outing together.

The Nigerian-born Weaving has spoken of his childhood spent travelling from Nigeria to Britain to Australia, before returning to England, then South Africa, then England and finally back to Australia at the age of 16.

Finally settled in Australia in 1976, Weaving, who had been diagnosed with stress-triggered epilepsy, found himself unexpectedly in a broken family when his mother, Anne, separated from his father soon after.

Weaving himself, perhaps as a consequence, never married, but enjoys a stable relationship in Paddington with his long-term partner Katrina Greenwood and their two teenage children, Harry and Holly.