It is not every day that you get two overly candid fancy actors expressing their deep confusion about the craft that is blockbuster voice acting, but today is a special day! So let us convene a special meeting of the Ashamed Voice Actors Club, during which Hugo Weaving (the voice of Megatron in Transformers) and Paul Bettany (the voice of J.A.R.V.I.S. in Iron Man) will share their feelings about accepting money for movies that confuse them. Take it away, Hugo Weaving:
“[Transformers]’s a weird job for me because it honestly was a two-hour voice job initially … It was one of the only things I’ve ever done where I had no knowledge of it, I didn’t care about it, I didn’t think about it. They wanted me to do it. In one way, I regret that bit. I don’t regret doing it, but I very rarely do something if it’s meaningless. It was meaningless to me, honestly. I don’t mean that in any nasty way. I did it.”
Did he bond with Michael Bay, at least?
I have never met him. I was never on set. I’ve seen his face on Skype. I know nothing about him, really. 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. That sounds absolutely pathetic! I’ve never done anything like that, in my life.
Meanwhile, here is Paul Bettany discussing how he has never even seen Iron Man and feels deep guilt for accepting a “sack of money”:
Paul Bettany! If your children are going to watch Iron Man, sit down and watch it with them. Or the both of you could just guess the plot based on the title of your movies. “It’s about a man who is made of iron?” “It’s about a transforming being of some kind?” Yup, close enough.