LOTR Castmember Quotes

Christopher Lee
Speaker
Topic
Quote
Brad
Ring*Con, 11/22/02		 Knife-throwing Dourif did tell an amusing anecdote about Christopher Lee - about how the actor would talk about having been in the SAS, and being the best at lots of things and that people were beginning to wonder if he wasn't stretching the truth a bit. One day, Dourif revealed, there was a discussion about some knife-throwing in the movie, and it was going to be difficult to stage. Lee heard the discussion and picked up this rusty nail to demonstrate and threw it at a dartboard. "He got a bullseye! Nobody gets a bullseye! We believed him after that!", the actor told us.
Christopher
Brussels International Festival of the Fantasy Film, 3/27/02		 Casting I was doing a television film in Britain called Ghormengast, which was wonderful I thought, and I got a message. I knew of course that the Lord of the Rings was being made, and when I heard that for the first time I thought ‘Ah.. fantastic’ Because when I first read the books when they came out I had this dream that one day they would make these books into a film. And then I thought ‘Oh no, this will never happen. It’s impossible, can’t be done. It’ll cost too much money, it will take too much time’ and so on and so forth. And I had this other dream that if they ever do make these films I want to be in them. Dreams don’t come true very often, but in this case it did.
But, 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.
Christopher
Brussels International Festival of the Fantasy Film, 3/27/02		 Saruman Getting into the skin of a character. Now I have read the books so I already knew a great deal about the character. I knew almost everything he ever said and what happened to him. And I knew that he had this enormous power, that he was the most powerful of all the wizards. The wizards are called Istari. And there were in fact five. There was Saruman the White, who as number one came to Middle-earth. There was Gandalf the Grey, Radagast the Brown. You don’t see him, you don’t even see him in the books. Then there were two other. They were called the Blue Wizards, Alatar and Pallando. But they are not in the Lord of the Rings, so really we don’t know what happened to them. Basically there are only two wizards in the Lord of the Rings who really mean anything and the important thing is that Saruman the White, who was the head of the council, the most intelligent one, the most powerful one, he was the most brilliant and he was, at a time, a very decent, kind and understanding man. But at some point, we don’t really know when because Tolkien doesn’t tell us, at some point he changes.
And the Lord of the Rings really is Sauron, I don’t know if you realise that, because Sauron made the One Ring to rule them al. So the Lord of the Rings is Sauron and Saruman, because he has the palantir and can see what’s going on, thinks he can become more powerful then Sauron. That he can be the Lord of the Rings and that is why he says to Gandalf: ‘You must join with me, we must join with Sauron, so that we can take over the world.’ Now what he really means is: ‘So that I can take over the world.’
There are two important things about Saruman the White, two very important things. He is not a human being, nor is Gandalf. They are immortal; they are Maia, which means, well, that they are not human beings. They are sent by the Valar, who are the gods, to Middle-earth hundreds of years ago. And I think the second important thing is the voice of Saruman. Because he has this quality, I tried to put it into the film and at certain times I do succeed, he has this quality in his voice that is hypnotic. He says to people: ‘what is all this trouble? Why are you all here? Why do you believe that I am not a good person?’ And he goes on talking like that, in this strange, strange way. And then somebody laughs, you’ve read the books, and it breaks the spell and he gets very angry, of course, because the true Saruman comes out.
Ian Holm
USA Today, 12/14/01		 Languages Christopher Lee is just wonderful as Saruman. When we did the junket in Cannes, I was just gobsmacked by his linguistic ability. The press of the world was there, and he spoke Afrikaans, Swahili, Nordic languages, Spanish, German, French ... not just hello, either. Ian and I asked him, 'How do you do it?' He said, 'I've been in an awful lot of films.'
Ian Holm
USA Today, 12/14/01		 Is he scary? Not at all. He can be boring. Simply because of his enthusiasm. He never draws a breath. Apart from that, he's an exhilarating character.

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