LOTR Castmember Quotes

Casting
Speaker
Topic
Quote
Andy
BBC Newsround, 3/21/03		 Auditioning, Style I suppose originally I was chosen more for the voice, when I first auditioned it was originally - it was described to me as a voice role and then the physical side of that came slightly later. Although I could only do the voice if I found the physical position. But then I started reading the books and looked at the way that Tolkein described Gollum's movement and so I drew a lot of that - drew a lot of my inspiration from that and also the artists who worked on the film their sketches gave me a lot of inspiration as well.
Christopher Casting I was making this television film for the BBC, I knew they were going to make the Lord of the Rings, I knew Peter Jackson's work because I had seen some of it, and then I got this message saying will I go and meet him, in a church, in the back of a church, and would I mind being videotaped reading a scene. And I did. I went like this except I didn't have a beard. And I went from the studios to this church, which was in Tottenham Court Road, and Peter Jackson was there with his wife Fran and with the two casting people. And he said 'A lot of people have refused to come here and do this; they won't be videotaped for a film here. They want an offer then they'll come and read. So I am very grateful for you coming but may I ask why you came?' And I said 'Because I want to be in the film.' I mean I know the books backwards, I read them every year. And I proved him so, he started asking me questions about the books and I answered all of them. And then he said 'Would you mind reading this?' And it was a scene between Gandalf and I think Frodo. It was either Frodo or Bilbo, I can't remember. So I wondered 'Will he ask me to play Gandalf? ' Which I've always dreamed of doing, but I thought 'No he won't offer me Gandalf because I'm too old, physically, to do it..' And… although the fight you saw in the film between me and Ian McKellen, we did a lot of that ourselves, we did… and I still have a lot of bruises and marks. So I thought he won't offer me Gandalf but certainly I would read for him and so the man behind the camera read Frodo and I read Gandalf. And then he showed me a bit of pictures and photographs of locations in New Zealand, and he showed me what Gollum would look like, and he showed me what the other characters would look like, some of the sketches, some of the pictures… I thought this is incredible, this is wonderful and it'll be fantastic if they make it. But he didn't ask me if I would play Saruman. He never mentioned it. I found out that he always wanted me to play Saruman but he didn't tell me. So I left, went on with my work, a few days later, well, maybe a week or two I can't remember, my agent received a message saying they were sending me the script of the first film and they want me to play Saruman, simple as that.
Elijah First Heard I was working in Austin, Texas, on 'The Faculty,' and that's where Harry lives, and he often visited the set because he was friends with Robert Rodriguez. [Knowles in fact had a cameo in the film as one of the titular alien-possessed teachers. -- Ed.] And one day he came up to me, and he was like, 'Dude, they're making 'Lord of the Rings' as a feature. You gotta play Frodo!' And the news was really exciting, but they weren't casting for it at that point. It was just kind of in the news. I first heard about it from him, [but] I actually wasn't approached to audition for it until nearly a year later.
Elijah Frodo Tape "My agent called me and said, 'Look, they're casting 'Lord of the Rings'; Peter Jackson is gonna direct it, and you should go in and put yourself on tape', [But] the idea of putting myself on tape in a casting office wasn't particularly attractive to me, mainly because I wanted to try to convey my passion for the project and for the role, and going into the casting office against a white background and being put on tape did not seem at all conducive to what I wanted to portray. So I [decided to do] my own tape, which I'd never done before, but I figured that this project deserved my own interpretation and my full attention. So I got a voice coach and worked on my accent for a little while, and then a few friends of mine got together and we went up to the Hollywood Hills after getting some costumes at Western Costume, and we shot the scenes like you would a film, [with] various angles and things. And we went that night to the Miramax offices and borrowed their Avid machine and edited it together, and the next day I brought the video into the casting office and I kind of let it go, just knowing that I'd put my best foot forward in terms of getting the role, and I would see what happened. And it all went from there.
Elijah Why Him I don’t know. I did an audition tape: I put together my own tape and I had a little hobbit costume on and went barefoot and shot some scenes in some sort of forest in Hollywood and I sent the tape in, and Peter watched it a few days later, and I guess whatever he saw in that tape was what he was looking for. I guess that’s the only way I can really describe it. Other than that I’m not really sure. I was very lucky, though, certainly.
Hugo Casting Barrie had produced The Matrix, and he was producing The Lord of the Rings as well, and so he rang me direct, he said, 'Would you be interested in being in the Lord of the Rings films?'. I said yes, and about a week later I went over and met Pete and [co-writer] Fran [Walsh], and I met Barrie again. I had a chat [with] them, and they showed me a 20-minute compilation of what they had already shot up to then. It was mostly scenes in Hobbiton and scenes of the Black Riders. It was pretty fantastic stuff. So I was very interested. I was very keen right from the word go, right from when Barrie and I first spoke. I thought it would be a lot of fun to play an elf. Then, when I saw the footage, I thought that Pete had created a world that was very true to itself, that seemed to have a very strong sense of reality. They made me an offer, and I said yes again.
Miranda Rivers (casting director) New Zealand Army, Extras You used the New Zealand army at some points? Yes. We used them for a whole lot of battle scenes. The army are another kettle of fish altogether because they are trained to kill. They were trying to kill each other with our fake rubber props. But you ask those guys to march, and they know how to march. By the end, we were just these casting machines. It also became a gag for us. We had no personal lives anymore. We would walk down the street, and people were not people, they were types: I'd be going, 'Hobbit!' 'Elf!' 'Uruk-hai!' 'Rohan!' I got a lot of elves off the street
Miranda Rivers Extras You have no idea what I've seen. People knew they had a very short time to impress, so I had the guy in the green tights playing the bag pipes. I had the man with the scroll talking to me only in elfish when I only wanted to know his name. I had the guy who sat at the piano playing me all this music and wouldn't leave. I had the gothic with the black hair and the full body piercing trying to be just involved somehow. I said, "Would you be willing to take out your piercing?" And they took offense at that. They wanted to know, "Why?! What's wrong with it? Why can't I be who I am?!" I'm like, "This is Middle-earth." I saw all types.
Miranda Rivers Extras The stress was huge. It was absolutely huge. Especially when you’re doing night shoots and they completely change what kind of characters are due and you’ve got all these people lined up and you’ve got six hours to find another hundred people ... We had a huge filing systems of people who were interested. We had A-list people who we’d ring first off and then B-list and then C-list and D-list and E-list—and by then it was like, “So, have you got a cousin? Have you got a friend? Have you got anyone?” By the end, we had a sign on the door that I liked: IF YOU’RE BREATHING, YOU’RE BOOKED. I don’t know how we did it, but we always pulled it off.
Peter Casting For me the project really came to life when the cast came on board and brought their individual interpretations to the roles. They made it so much more realistic than I had ever imagined.
Peter Cast Summoning descriptive powers worthy of Tolkien himself, director Peter Jackson takes a shot at describing each of his main The Lord of the Rings cast members in a word or two: Ian McKellen (Gandalf). "Naughty"
Elijah Wood (Frodo). "Wonderful"
Sean Astin (Sam). "Joker"
Dominic Monaghan (Merry). "More naughty"
Billy Boyd (Pippin). "Even naughtier"
Ian Holm (Bilbo). "A pleasure"
Liv Tyler (Arwen). "Beautiful"
Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn). "Brave"
Cate Blanchett (Galadriel). "Serene"
Sean Bean (Boromir). "A gentleman"
John-Rhys Davies (Gimli). "An experience"
Christopher Lee (Saruman). "Great fun"
Orlando Bloom (Legolas). "Passionate"
Peter Casting I think everybody, when they read a book they really like, imagines the perfect cast for the film. We got to do that for real. It fell into two categories, really. There were the actors we imagined from the very beginning--Ian McKellen, Ian Holm, Sean Bean. Then there's the roles where we wanted an unknown and found someone like Orlando Bloom, who plays Legolas. And then there's someone like Elijah Wood. We thought Frodo would be an unknown English actor. But he sent us an audition tape where he dressed up in this really cheesy hobbit costume and hired a dialect coach for the accent. When I saw the tape, I knew instantaneously I had found Frodo.
Peter Elijah We never thought of or considered Elijah Wood. We were thinking Frodo was probably going to be an unknown English actor. We were casting in London and we'd seen about 200 Frodos and no one had even walked through the door who was right and were were starting to panic. Then a videotape arrived in the mail and it was a tape that one of Elijah's friends had filmed on a camcorder. Elijah heard we were doing LOTR and he'd looked at the book and pulled out a few scenes and dressed himself up in a costume and went out into the woods behind his house and had a friend videotape him doing some stuff from the book. I mean, we would have never have thought of Elijah Wood in our lives and suddenly we looked at this tape and this guy was Frodo Baggins. He was absolutely what we'd imagined Frodo to be like. So basically Elijah cast himself. He found us, we didn't find him.
Peter Elijah We were at a desperate point in trying to find Frodo and we put this tape in the machine and it was extraordinary. There he was.
Sean A Casting It was between me, who had just run the L.A. Marathon at a trim 160 pounds, and a heavy set actor in England whom they also liked for the part. So I convinced them I was capable of transforming into a bigger version of the myself. I committed to it and I did it. But I must say that the hardest part of being involved with the trilogy was putting that weight on, and living with this extra blubber for a year and a half. I became this big, bulky, stocky, heavyset guy, and it was hard. It was hard on my back, my knees, and my heart, I'm sure. I got back to about 168 by the time we went to Cannes, and then I've crept back up to 180. It's a hard thing on the human body to vacillate with weight. It's really unhealthy. I'm trying now to design a lifestyle that will have me at a good weight that I can sustain over the long haul. But I became Sam!
Sean B Audition The 42-year-old Brit met director Peter Jackson for the first time in a hotel in London. "The room was incredibly small, and I was reading a scene from the script where I try to steal the ring from Frodo. And I sat there in the chair in the hotel room and tried to enact the role, but it was such a physical scene and hard to do in there... so when I later left the room I felt like 'shit, I could have done that a lot better'. But I obviously did something right, since I got the part."
Viggo Accepting The Role The honest truth is that I would have regretted not doing it. I had to decide immediately and get on the plane, and I knew that I would regret it if I hadn't done it. But what I didn't count on was how strong the bond would be with the cast and crew. Everybody was really wonderful. It's a lasting thing. That was an unexpected gift.
Viggo Aragorn Switch A few days after shooting had begun, Viggo Mortensen took a call from his agent at his modest suburban house in Venice, Los Angeles. The actor cast as Aragorn, 27 year old Irishman Stuart Townsend (Shooting Fish, Queen of the Damned), had been fired by Jackson due to "creative differences" and the role was being offered to Mortensen. Mortensen had not read the books and despite the entreaties of his Tolkien-savvy, 11 year old son Henry, was unsure about plunging unprepared into a protracted shoot in a foreign country. "I guess in the end I did it because I would feel that I had been chicken shit really. I had to leave the next day, so I'm on the plane reading, looking at this gigantic book and thinking, 'What the hell have I done?"

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