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PICASSO AT THE LAPIN AGILE Release: 2008 | Role: Albert Einstein Info

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Published on: 6th December 2001

Everybody Ive spoken to on "Lord of the Rings" loved the project but thought it was the hardest thing they ever did. Yep. It was amazing. And it was so much more amazing than it was difficult. But the truth of the matter is that it was one of the most difficult experiences of anyones life. Ive never felt so tired in my life, and the things that were asked of usphysically, mentally, emotionally, constantlywere really extreme. But at the end of the day, it didnt matter because we were so passionate about what we were a part of.

Some people Ive spoken to didnt know how exhausted they were until was over.

Oh, I knew. I knew how exhausted I was. You go past the point of exhaustion. You do sort of lose it.

You had to spend an enormous amount of time with Sean Astin (Sam Gangee). If you hadnt like each other, you would have been in deep trouble.

Right? Wouldnt that have been terrible? We became like brothers. We spent all our time together.

Had you met him before?

I hadnt. I met him about four or five days before I flew to New Zealand for the first time. He was getting his wig fitted, as I needed to get mine fitted. I went to this hotel, and we kind of crossed paths in the lobby. Obviously we both knew who [the] other was. And we kind of stopped and looked at each other, and we just ran and gave each other a massive hugand that was the first time I ever met him. It was this instant connection because we knew what we were about to embark on together.

I take it there were a lot of schedule changes. You must have woken up a lot of times not knowing what you were about to shoot.

We never knew. About a month into the production, it became very obvious that we could not rely on the schedule. It was constantly changing. Ive never seen a schedule change so much. Weather was a huge factor. Sometimes actors werent available yet because they were coming from overseas. The script was constantly changingand thats a positive thing. Normally when people mention that a script had to be rewritten constantly I think people tend to assume that thats a negative, or that something was wrong. And that wasnt the case with this film. It was just trying to find the right balance with Tolkien and a filmic kind of perspectivetrying to include as much Tolkien as possible without making it too obscure.

You had to wear big rubber hobbit feet, right? Tell me about getting them applied.

We stood on a box. I had the sweatiest feet amongst the hobbits. So my hobbit feet tended to come off very quickly. The glue kinda melted away.

Were you teased for your sweaty feet?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I was the one to constantly have his feet reapplied. I had to stand up for the better part of an hour, and then I could sit down for the remainder.

Did you ever say, "Cant you just not show our feet in the shot, sir?"

Oh, constantly. We were all like little dealmakers. We were constantly walking around trying to figure out if they were going to show the feet or not. Most of the time we knewwe knewthey werent going to use them, and they would not admit it because they wanted to cover their ass. So constantly wed come to them and say, "Look, theyre not going to be seen so can you just say theyre not going to be seen, so we can have an extra hour of sleep tomorrow?" And theyre like, "No, Peter doesnt know what hes gonna see in the shot." Nine times out of 10 they wouldnt agree with us, and wed have to suck it up and put our feet onand we would be right.

Youre 20 now, right? Whats the drinking age in New Zealand?

Twenty.

You got lucky.

I did. I think they actually switched it. It was 20 initially and they switched it to either 19 or 18 when I got there.

The studio probably made that happen as a gift to the actors.

Right? It was actually much needed, I think.

Did you fall in love making the movie?

Yeah, oh, God, I loved it.

No, I mean, did you fall in love with anybody?

Oh. Ah, no, not really. I did have a couple of relationships, though. Im a hopeless romantic so its difficult not to over that period of time.

I heard that all nine members of the fellowship got a tattoo to commemorate making the movie.

That was an idea that we had early on, but a few of the fellowship members were reluctant to do it at first because they felt like, "What if this isnt a good thing? We dont know enough about how the productions gonna go now to determine whether getting a tattoo is a great decision." So we took a wait-and-see attitude. During the last month of filming, we brought the idea up again and everyone chimed and said, "This is something that we need to do." We actually had one of the guys from Weta [the special-effects shop] design various scripts in elvish. He gave us pages and pages of ways to write the number 9. We finally decided on one. And then we all went to this one guy in Wellington, kind of an older guy, who has this parlor. He opened on a Sunday for us. And the fellowship entered and we stood by each other as we all got branded. I have mine just below the waist.