Elijah Wood Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ

All we knew is that the books themselves have a huge fan base that supports them and have since their release, and a lot of people grew up reading those books, so there was a huge degree of anticipation about the movies as a result of that, but then at the end of the day we had no idea we knew and the impact was the impact and it was much bigger than we all could have imagined. I guess the Lord of the Rings trilogy was the summer of 1997. It was Harry Knowles who came in with the good news of the time and who then said to me the next day, hey mate, you see Peter Jackson is doing the trilogy from The Lord of the Rings and I remember specifically feeling like that made a lot of sense.

Celestial Creatures and I had seen the terrifying ones, but it was the Celestial Creatures specifically that stood out to me as something incredible, it's not a one on one competition but there are so many things in Celestial Creatures that establish what he is capable of as a filmmaker and marrying the notion of a fantasy realm with an emotional honesty and depth and I just remember thinking, oh my God, Peter Jackson, that's such an incredibly inspired idea and no, I hadn't read Lord of the Rings, but I had read the hobbits, I was certainly familiar with Middle Earth and Tolkien's kind of you and what it was about, so you know, marrying those two ideas in my head made a lot of sense, and I remember at the time that Harry was like you should, you should be frodo, i thought it would be cool, you know, and i remember my agent called me at the time and told me they were casting for lord of the rings. um, you should apply for frodo and I was like, oh yeah, me.

I'd love to, but you can't read the script. You have to go to the casting office to read the script. They are not delivering it. I thought it was okay, so I remember I went to Victoria Burroughs' casting office and sat down. I was alone in an office for two hours and read the script for The Fellowship of the Ring. I will never forget. I was driving home and I was so immersed in the world that was so palpable and realistic that it really came to life. off the page so I had never made my own audition tape before and this is way before the time when that was common so it was way before that and I just had this impulse partly because I was a little nervous in the moment when I just didn't want to go into a white room and do it that way.

I thought I had to do something different, so I was going to go to a vocal coach or a dialect coach for dialect and then I recruited some friends, including George Wang, who is a writer. Filmmaker, we went to the

wood

s, I think Griffith Park, and we filmed two of the audition sequences there and then one at my house and it's like each one had three scenes, each one was a different aspect of Frodo along the journey , the last. One of those who is deeply affected by the ring ring is mine. We went to the Miramax offices that night when Miramax was still around and we cut the scenes together and then I took that tape, its VHS release.

I took that tape to Victoria Burrow's house. office and then sent it by fedex to peter. I got a call from Peter himself, which was incredible, totally mind-blowing, and you know what an adventure and opportunity of a lifetime, what should I do? You must leave and leave quickly, where am I going? Walking into the shower there was an absolute realization of the enormity of the adventure and the fact that we were literally going to live in New Zealand for a long time which was exciting, I think we should get out of the way, what was that?

Feeling like I'm stepping into the shoes of Frodo's hobbit feet for the first time, exciting, really exciting, but I have to say yeah, I mean, there was a buzz, of course, there was a buzz of excitement, now that we're filming, here come on. but we had had some time very well spent before two months, two months and changes before filming, of the crew getting to know each other, rehearsing, talking about the

characters

, um, sword lessons, riding lessons, in some cases, rowing lessons, dialect coach, just this preparation program. that we were all part of a kind of training camp and when we started filming we were so ingrained with each other and with the movie that we were making that it was what it was, yeah, it was a busy and super exciting day and like oh my gosh, really we're doing it, but there was also this like we were already in a great way, you know, we had already spent a lot of time intertwined, you know, as a community heading on this journey together.

I had made these boots because the part of the thing was in the infancy of the Internet as far as um eyes on productions and spies and stuff, but it was happening and there were people trying to get pictures of We were in costume and they were trying to dissuade that happened and they had us in big tunics, you know, between takes and every time we traveled from place to place in case we were photographed and they had these big boots partly to protect the feet themselves, but also to cover them and there were these boots big ones that we could put on and cover our feet, uh, walking and yeah, I just remember that, like walking from our trailer and these big green boots like cloth, covering our feet and these robes uh it's amazing and you know, starting with that scene also with the four hobbits it was really lovely mary they are vikings hi frodo we had already formed a real bond so to start with that stuff which starts off very funny we are falling down this hill afterwards and pippen is running away from the field of worms from the farmers after stealing a bunch of vegetables and then we fall and it's a hilarious moment and then we realize we're on the road and we have to get out of the way.

Getting out of the way quickly and the feeling that something was coming was just cool and fun to play that material first. It was a perfect thing to start with. We are about to celebrate 20 years since the launch of Fellowship of the Ring. December and it's definitely been on our minds and strangely the memories that stand out the

most

aren't the

most

anticipated ones, so obviously getting in a helicopter and flying to the top of the mountain is an incredible thing and there are so many. a lot of those great memories, but the memories that stand out the most are the kind of mundane things, like the three hours between setups where we would go to each other's trailers and take a nap or play video games or after working 16 or 17 hours .

I still want to go out to dinner, go to lunch on the weekends, you know, rent videos from the Aerostreet video store and it's life because they were our lives, you know and it was fun to come back from that, it was very difficult. to express to people what it was like to have done it and to be there and then the next time, so there were 16 months of principal photography, we shot all three films at once and then I remember each one getting the call for the vans. and that was a one-time thing, it wasn't planned in advance, so it was like a couple of months after we got home, we got a call like, hey, let's get everyone back and we were like, yeah, cool, it wasn't over. . because we had gone through this whole process of saying goodbye, you know, what was a look really, it's hard enough to say goodbye after a month, two months on a movie, it was very hard to say goodbye after 16 months, especially when your life it moves you. knowing that when you're no longer home you're home, so coming back for each subsequent film was a joy, and yes I miss New Zealand, still the eternal sunshine of an impeccable mind and obviously I've seen all of Michelle's videos Gandre.

Up until that point, I would have done anything on that movie, it wouldn't have mattered before that and certainly putting that out there probably became the biggest motivator for me as an actor, just wanting to work with creatives that I love and and wanting to be a part of facilitating whatever it is. For it to be his vision became kind of a driving force behind any decision he ever had or could make as far as being an actor and anything like that, he just wanted to be a part of it. of whatever they were doing, um and the script was amazing and then the cast that they put together was amazing and I, yeah, I was very fortunate to be able to be a part of that movie, it's still one of my favorite movies regardless of whether it was in it or not, I just think the movie is a masterpiece, it's so emotional that it's a little annoying.

Jim's performance in that film is one of the best of his career. I still think the kind of emotional vulnerability he achieved was really incredible, Kate. Winslet having the opportunity to work with Kate was a great pleasure. I've been a fan of hers since the celestial creatures marked Ruffalo. Kirsten, who I had known since she was little, had seen her as just an amazing uh, Tom Wilkinson too, the cast. She was so cool, yeah can I help you? You mean, can I help you with something that's in service of Michelle's vision on a daily basis as well, and a lot of that was on camera?

There was a scene that changed everything for everyone who was there. I mean, I was always so excited, but a scene that exemplified what the movie was for the cast and crew and it's a scene in the movie that is a warning, so it takes Kate and Jim from their home in Montauk to through a hallway. They had been part of that house in this real, practical hallway of the hospital or the doctor's office, and he runs into the doctor's office, wakes me up, and sees himself talking to Tom Wilkinson, the doctor, and then the camera is panning. like he changes his clothes, he becomes the patient who is watching the camera movements and he goes back to being Jim watching himself and then I'm in the background like looking for some papers, it was an incredible wonder that there were two versions of Jim in the same shot. him having to change his clothes was incredible and you saw it on camera, there is no trick, it just happened and I remember that night the whole team went out for a drink for the first time, it was the second week and it was the end of the second week and it was electric, this feeling that we were doing something incredible and we all got to see it for the first time and it was really very special, it was a great experience, without City, first, being a part of it.

It was a great dream, I love graphic novels, it's weird the timing of it happened, I read the whole thing and then I heard I was out to dinner with Robert and he was like, "I'm doing Sin City" and I was like holy shit, I just read these books and in my head as I was reading them I was thinking, man, it would be amazing to see him animated because the artwork is so beautiful and so specific, and we were having dinner and he was like, yeah, my next project is in the city. Do you want to see some of that?

And I had filmed that opening sequence with Josh Hartnett on the roof, the wind picks up electric. He had filmed it as a proof of concept for Frank Miller to prove that he could bring the stories. to life in such a way that it looked like the work that he had drawn and also as a proof of concept to make the movie, so I went out to his car and on his computer is this scene that he had already filmed and it was like it was a game changer like oh my gosh if you've done it it's exactly like the comic and then he asked me to audition and my audition process was going into um I was auditioning at all four seasons in Los Angeles. and I went into a hotel room and I put on glasses and he said, "I'm just going to read passages from the comic from the graphic novel and you just look at the camera, that was my audition, there was nothing physical at all um and I got the paper uh obviously what kind so I poked around and saw what's buried it was a pleasure to be able to work in that space and then you know we were working from the comics the graphic novel was the storyboard so every panel of this.

The graphic novel was filmed and realized, so you literally had the shot of the movie in the graphic novel, which was an incredible and electrifying feeling because you know it well and you think we are filming that shot in that frame in that frame is impossible, no one can sneak up on me, I'm going blind, but then frank was also coming up with new offset frames, um, and there were many present to comment on this, it's true, this is what Kevin would do This is what. What Kevin would do. I don't, it's great and I filmed all my scenes in two days because predominantly the movie was filmed on a blue or green screen, then on some sets the bar was a stage and there were a couple more but most of it was green screen . and mickey rourke had already filmed his scenes so i filmed everything with mickey's double um yeah and I did some wire work that I've never done so I'm on the wires doing high kicks and it was dude it was amazing it was so It's very fun and fun to play a villain.

I had never played a villain or a psychopath before. I am certainly not a mute. Wilfred. I think he was open to television and certainly open to comedy. I think that was also something I was actively looking for. just something in the comedy space because I hadn't really had much experience in comedy and I was excited about it as a challenge and also being a comedy fan and this script came up and they sent it to me and I lost it like The script It was the pilot script and it was very funny. Then I investigated because I knew it was based onThe fascinating thing is that this man you know considered an FBI agent his best friend and confidant.

Now Bill wouldn't consider Ted the same, but that's kind of the core of the story. You know, there's kind of a central thesis in the movie that is this idea that Ted is fascinated with the notion that anyone could be able to do what he does and that he's not crazy? And I think it's a defense mechanism, certainly, and kind of an expression of a man who is ultimately faced with the death of him. And for Bill it's also about knowing whether or not he thinks he could with that question and just going through this process and ultimately you know there's a part of that job that is getting information and understanding and that's really for what was there and in the middle of all that there's a human connection that happens and I think that's also the core of the movie and I think one of the most fascinating things because you knowYeah, I guess you know you could call him a monster and he did monstrous things. , at the end of the day, he was an imperfect human and there were two human beings that had a human connection, you know, and that's just fascinating, so it's just There have been so many characterizations of Bundy over the years, so many different incredible documentaries , um, and movies, and this was just a different story that I think really fascinated us and kind of haunted us, you know?