Hugo Weaving has said he failed to prepare for his voice role as the chief villain in the multibillion-dollar Transformers films because he found the job "meaningless".

Weaving, who voiced Decepticon leader Megatron in Michael Bay's trilogy of movies about warring clans of giant "robots in disguise" is known for bringing character and clarity to his genre work: he won plaudits for his turn as the maniacal Agent Smith in the Matrix movies and was popular as half-elven elder Elrond in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. But when it came to a talking mega-machine, the British-Australian actor did not even bother reading the script.

"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," Weaving told the Collider blog. "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."

Weaving also said he had never met Bay, was unaware of the director's body of work when he took the job on Transformers and still knew very little about him now. "My link to that and to Michael Bay is so minimal. I have never met him," continued the Priscilla, Queen of the Desert actor. "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. It's hard to say any more about it than that, really."

Weaving is currently promoting sprawling science-fiction drama Cloud Atlas, which reunites him with the directors of the Matrix trilogy, Lana and Andy Wachowski. He will next reprise his turn as Elrond in three Hobbit films based on The Lord of the Rings creator JRR Tolkien's earlier book.

Weaving's co-star Shia LaBeouf has also been less than complimentary about the Transformers films in the past, describing the third film as "crap" and the experience of working within the studio system as like having executives "stick a finger up your ass". Nevertheless, Bay is currently planning a fourth film for release in 2014. LaBeouf has left the series, but it has not yet been confirmed if Weaving will return.