Kou Voravong
Kou Voravong grew up in Savannakhet and pursued a primary education there. He obtained the « certificat d'études primaires complémentaire indochinois » - Certificate of Indochinese Additional Primary Studies - (CEPCI) in 1930, went afterward to Vientiane and began his first-secondary-school year at the Collège Auguste Pavie. But because of a conflict which opposed him to French Colonial administration, his adopted father was sentenced to prison that same year. As reaction to this situation, Kou Voravong left school and returned to Savannakhet. As an out-of-school teenager, he practiced sports, especially soccer.
Hugo Weaving
Weaving was born in Nigeria to English parents. Born at the University of Ibadan Teaching Hospital, in Ibadan, in the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, he is the son of Anne (née Lennard; born 1932), a tour guide and former teacher, and Wallace Weaving (born 1929), a seismologist. His maternal grandmother was Belgian. A year after his birth, his family returned to the United Kingdom, living in Bedford and Brighton before moving to Melbourne and Sydney in Australia; Johannesburg in South Africa; and then returning to the United Kingdom again. While in the UK, he attended The Downs School, Wraxall, near Bristol, and Queen Elizabeth's Hospital. While at the Downs School, in 1973 Weaving played one of his first theatrical roles, taking the part of Captain Asquith in Robert Bolt's "The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew". His family moved back to Australia in 1976, where he attended Knox Grammar School in Sydney. He graduated from Sydney's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1981. At NIDA, one of Weaving's acting mentors was the renowned 'Kevin Jackson' who now teaches at various locations in Sydney, including the International Screen Academy.