One of my favorite things about the whole phenomenon about “The Lord of the Rings” in popular culture is that people look at it as a kind of tradition. People get together and go with their families to see the movies. A lot of people are really excited. The whole family is going out to dinner at this restaurant and then to see the movie. I’ve heard tons of stories about how people do that.
I think it’s really cool to the extent that we had this kind of bonding experience together as a cast and crew making the movies, and it’s been talked about so much that it’s become kind of this ‘thing’ to the extent that there’s some relationship between [us and the fans]. It’s great.
How has the experience of working on “The Lord of the Rings” changed you?
I seem to travel all the time from October of last year up until now, I’ve just been working straight through. I miss my family and friends. I haven’t seen them in about a year. Somehow it’s been like I’ve been in suspended animation for a couple of years, in terms of living normal life on the planet.
My idea of what the character of Sam is is better than me. Sam is an emblem for the perfect friend. I certainly can’t compete with that. I thought a lot about how my inability to be as good as Sam is, but then I sort of let myself off the hook a little bit and realized that life sort of takes its own course. I’ll be able to rekindle friendships over time.
Did you get really badly calloused feet?
No, they took really good care of our feet. It was sort of a foot fetish-ers dream. Even though you’d start out in the early morning with cold, wet, sticky glue and discomfort, you ended up with an alcohol foot scrub, bath, and foot massage. They had to keep the skin on our feet healthy because they were going to be applying and removing these prosthetics every single day. I was actually surprised that the skin didn’t wear down more, didn’t become more fragile, actually. It wasn’t like we were barefooted. I guess the prosthetics got calluses (laughing).
How did you survive being a child actor?
I got married young and had kids young.
How normal was your childhood?
Pretty normal. I think there were elements in my childhood where my awareness and my proximity to certain experiences were unique. In terms of being normal, I played Little League, went to school, had friends, and had hobbies. There’s a lot of actors whose experiences were much more linked with their experience with their work and people’s perceptions of them, or their relationship to celebrity. That kind of thing. I sort of felt a little removed from that.
It was fun. We’d do a photo shoot and be on a couple of teen magazines and that was interesting. Then somehow that phenomenon didn’t bleed into the rest of normal life. It was like we’d look at the magazine and it was like looking in a yearbook. That would go away, and that was it. I didn’t feel our house, and our friends, and my school – the places I was, it wasn’t who I was. The things I was interested in doing didn’t draw that type of energy toward me. People were focused on that around me. The idea of being famous or a working actor, it was almost like a parallel experience. I’d be working in film once and a while, and then I’d have a normal life. I felt like once in a while I got to step out of normal life and do something, then come back to normal life. But normal life always seemed like it was there.
Additional “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” Press Junket Interviews:
Viggo Mortensen, John Rhys-Davies, Bernard Hill, David Wenham/John Noble, and Richard Taylor/Barrie M. Osborne
“The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” Premiere Coverage:
Orlando Bloom/Liv Tyler, Viggo Mortensen, Elijah Wood/Ian McKellen, Dominic Monaghan, David Wenham/John Noble, John Rhys Davies/Bernard Hill, and Peter Jackson/Richard Taylor
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
"Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” Photo Gallery
"Return of the King” Trailer, Credits, Soundtrack Info and Movie News
