Do extracurricular activities matter for a person in academia?
I think this would depend on your meaning of "extracurricular".  In terms of having photography as a hobby, I am not sure how that would help.  However, for faculty, extracurricular activities that benefit the university have been well discussed on academia SE, for example, serving as a reviewer on a journal.  Other activities that could be seen as beneficial is volunteering for a first robotics at the local school (if the university if public, that may be more important for secondary education), or organizing a TEDx event.

In general, I would view the reason anyone would care about extracurricular activities is for students; how does it make the student more diverse, more capable, more knowledgable, easier to work with, etc.  And for faculty; how does it make the faculty represent the university better, improve student or research connections, make their own research more interesting, etc.