CHAPTER SIXTEEN

To this day, Elijah insists it was his idea. Given half a chance, though, Orlando will also take credit. Or responsibility. Or blame. And while Viggo has never sought any recognition for his role in the episode, I’m pretty sure he was a major player. Regardless of its origin, I do know that the seed was planted shortly after we arrived in New Zealand and took root in the months that followed. Every so often, someone (usually Elijah) would bring it up, and someone else would second the motion. Then we’d all forget about it. In the final week of principal photography, however, as it finally began to dawn on us that the adventure was really going to come to an end and we’d all be going home, the discussion began anew, this time with an almost religious fervor.

“Let’s all get tattoos!”

My initial reaction back in the summer of 1999 was one of self-righteous dismissal: Ah, that’s stupid. I’m not doing that. To me, the concept lacked an air of authenticity. It felt like Elijah trying a little bit too hard to form a bond among the actors that mirrored the bond between the members of the Fellowship. Not that I doubted his sincerity. Far from it, in fact. I knew Elijah would leave Wellington sporting a fresh tattoo. Not me, though. I would be nearly thirty years old by the time we left, and in all those years I’d never once succumbed to the urge to brand my body. For a kid who had been raised in the bubble of celebrity, who had been hanging out with artists and writers and actors since he was a toddler, I was an unusually conservative fellow. Not politically, perhaps, but certainly in my personal life. Let’s put it this way: I was more Ozzie Nelson than Ozzy Osbourne.

The idea of me getting a tattoo seemed patently ridiculous and a little bit pathetic, like a middle-aged man who goes out and buys a flashy sports car, leaves his wife, and begins dating a fitness instructor barely out of her teens. I wasn’t that guy. I didn’t want to be that guy. Getting a tattoo seemed a tentative step down that slippery slope.

As I said, though, that was in the beginning.

My attitude toward the production improved in its last few months. As Sam’s character was presented with exactly the type of heroic moments that Peter had promised, I was filled with pride about the work I had done and more than a little regret over not having handled the setbacks and frustrations with more elegance. Moreover, a closeness had developed between the cast members—the hobbits in particular—that could not be denied. We had spent nearly a year and a half together, living like brothers, working, playing, arguing, and supporting each other through the hard times and celebrating as one in the good times. Regardless of the outcome, we had shared and endured something extraordinary, and the likelihood that any one of us would ever be involved in a similar cinematic experience was remote, to say the least. (Remember, we really didn’t know then how the films would be received, and I don’t think anyone assumed they would become the worldwide phenomenon that they have.) As the countdown to our day of departure reached single digits, an inevitable and inescapable sadness permeated the air. It was almost as though we couldn’t believe that it was really coming to an end. But it was, and that truth prompted another, more serious round of discussions about commemorating our experience with a trip to a local tattoo parlor.

A few days before our scheduled exodus it came to my attention that Viggo had already begun negotiations with the proprietor of a little place on Cuba Street called Roger’s Tattoo Art. The idea was to open the shop for a couple hours on a Saturday or Sunday morning, at a time when it would normally be closed and the streets would not yet be flocked with shoppers and tourists. I remember smiling to myself when I heard about this. Somehow, after so much time in New Zealand, working so closely with this group of people, it no longer seemed like such a silly or self-destructive thing to do. It seemed appropriate. It seemed honorable.

“You know what?” I told Christine that night. “If everybody else agrees, I think I’m going to do it.”

She gave me a hard look, the kind that only a wife can give a husband, and while she didn’t exactly shake her head or roll her eyes, I could tell she wasn’t crazy about the idea. Whether her disapproval stemmed from a simple dislike of body art (on her husband, anyway), or from concern that my decision was due to simple, sophomoric peer pressure, I can’t be sure. Nevertheless, Christine gave me her blessing.

“If you really want to do this, I’ll support you.”

My primary concern revolved around my daughter. What if by getting a tattoo I was sending the wrong message to Ali? What would I say, ten or twelve years hence, when she strolled into the house with her navel pierced?

“Ali, you really shouldn’t disfigure your body that way. It shows a lack of self-respect.”

“Uh, Dad?

“Yes, dear?”

“Don’t be such a hypocrite.”

In the end, the thought of that exchange, however unpleasant, wasn’t enough to dissuade me. Nor was the fact that my own standard for crumbling to the will of the group—“I’ll do it if everyone else does”—had failed to hold up. First of all, Sean Bean, who played Boromir, had already departed, so he was out (in fairness, it should be pointed out that Sean eventually joined the off-screen Fellowship by getting a tattoo during a long night in New York or London—I forget which—with Orlando Bloom). Second, John Rhys-Davies steadfastly refused to participate in such shenanigans, in part, he explained (not entirely without irony), because of an epidemic of mad cow disease that was ravaging Europe: “Why, I wouldn’t follow an Englishman behind a needle for all the money in the world!” No matter. In John’s stead, an invitation was extended to his scale double, Brett Beattie, who jumped at the opportunity.6

In retrospect, I think my primary motivation was fear. I couldn’t imagine at that point that the movie (or movies) would ever actually come out. I couldn’t imagine the movies being completed or anyone ever seeing them or enjoying them, or me being in them. None of my time in New Zealand seemed real. I was getting on a plane to go home, and soon it would all be a memory. At times, I’d wonder, Did any of it really happen? It all seems like an illusion, a jumble of images and sound bites that don’t quite add up to something whole. Was I really here for eighteen months? Is that possible? In some ways I felt so disconnected from the whole experience that I legitimately worried about whether the movies would ever be presented to a mass audience. Maybe they’d go straight to video. Maybe they’d sit in a can in Peter’s basement. That sounds crazy, I know, but it didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility. After all, nothing like this had ever been done—nothing like this had ever been attempted. What if the movies disappeared and nobody ever had a chance to see what we did? Or what if the movies were released and still no one got it, because even if each of the movies was ten hours long, there still would be a thousand brilliant little moments left on the cutting-room floor?

I knew that when I boarded a plane and looked down at New Zealand fading into the blue Pacific, I wanted to be able to say, “It happened, and here’s my own little memorial to it.” So it wasn’t like I was coerced into getting a tattoo; no one twisted my arm. I went along willingly because I came to believe it was a worthy thing to do, and I don’t regret it in the least.

Once we committed to the idea of getting tattoos, the next step was to come up with an interesting design, something cool and interesting and emblematic of our collective experience. It had to be small, too, something that wouldn’t call unnecessary attention to itself. We were actors, after all, not bikers, and this act was merely a brief walk on the wild side. Furthermore, we had agreed ahead of time that a small tattoo would work best because it could be hidden. This wasn’t supposed to be a publicity stunt, and we didn’t want it to devolve into that. This was about honoring each other and the work we had done, as well as solidifying, in some way, our commitment to remain friends and brothers for life. To that end, we settled on a tattoo that depicts the elvish symbol for the number nine, the number of members of the Fellowship. Deepening the impact of the tattoo is that it was based on a drawing created by Alan Lee specifically for this occasion. In other words, it’s an Alan Lee original, and it was a very nice thing for him to do. Alan is a gracious man who was always doing things like that. Before we left New Zealand, Elijah and I wanted to present something to the crew, so we asked Alan to sketch an image of Frodo and Sam turning and waving good-bye. He kindly agreed, of course, and even added Gollum—peering out between our legs. We transferred the image to a card and made hundreds of copies that we signed and distributed as parting gifts.

We arrived at Roger’s Tattoo Art on the morning of December 17, 2000. I’d walked by the shop a hundred times before but had never given any thought to opening the door, had in fact barely noticed the place even existed. But now, here I was, surrounded by the Fellowship (as well as Christine and Alexandra), waiting for my turn at the needle. It was almost hard to believe. For Viggo and Orlando, who already had tattoos, I’m sure this was nothing more than a joyous event, a noble salute to friendship and camaraderie. To me it was all of that, as well as a frightening leap into the great unknown. I think the other neophytes—the tattoo virgins—probably felt as I did, although we all did our best to put up a sturdy facade, including the one person I was most shocked to see: Ian McKellen.

I could only imagine what they would think back in England, if they could see Ian now, this giant of the British stage, hanging out at a tattoo parlor. Not that Ian was opposed to getting in touch with his funky side. Ian is an exceptionally hip guy who exists on the cutting edge of culture. He’s always finding interesting places to go, and hanging out with the most fascinating people. He’s just a very cool guy, the kind of guy I wanted to be when I lived in New York for three months when I was twenty years old and didn’t have kids. Ian was sixty, but vigorously protective of his attachment to youth and youth culture. And I’m sure he experienced less trepidation than I did about patronizing Roger’s Tattoo Art.

Two major decisions had to be made before the fun could begin: which part of the body to decorate, and who would go first. Each of us made his own decision about where to have the tattoo applied. Billy suggested the ankle, which I thought was perfect, since we hobbits had spent thousands of hours having our feet attended to. Hobbit feet, of course, have long been the subject of conjecture and speculation and armchair psychoanalysis. They’re big and hairy and goofy, and Tolkien devotes considerable effort to their description. One of the reasons Tolkien really connected with the people who dominated the counterculture of the 1960s was his apparent agreement with hippie philosophy: not just the environmental treatise and not just his messages of peace and brotherhood, but also the smoking of the pipe weed, and the elves and the barefoot hobbits. There’s something about the sacredness of feet that people in the hippie world would understand and appreciate. Tolkien couldn’t have known that, of course, since he wrote The Lord of the Rings many years earlier. Nevertheless, he knew that by making the feet bigger, he was drawing attention to them. Whether he was making a sexual joke (big feet, big dick), I don’t know, although there was certainly no shortage of those during filming, for anyone who chose to reach for that interpretation. Anyway, Billy liked the idea of honoring the hobbit feet by having his ankle tattooed, and I agreed with him, so we became the two members of the Fellowship to have tattoos etched on our ankles.

Billy went first, and while it was obviously not a pleasant experience for him, he had a sense of humor about it. I held his leg down, as Roger Ingerton, the proprietor and tattoo artist, pulled up a chair and went to work. For the next seven or eight minutes, with the needle whining and whirring, Billy grimaced and moaned. Every so often, he shouted, “Oh, man, it hurts!” while the rest of us laughed nervously. Then he jumped off the table, winced dramatically, and gave me a pat on the back.

“Your turn, Sean.”

And so it was. I was scared, but also emboldened by adrenaline. As hard as the previous year and a half had been, at that moment, in that setting, all I could think was, Look how much fun we’re having. So I lay down on the table and presented my ankle to Roger, who wasted no time in getting started. I’d always wondered how it would feel to get a tattoo, and now I knew.

Aaaaaarrrrggghh!

I was shocked by how much it hurt, how quickly the pain shot through my skin and into my anklebone. You see people getting tattoos in the movies, and it never seems to be a big deal. They kind of sit there and laugh or chat casually as the artist dabs ink onto a meaty biceps. Well, maybe that’s the way it works when they have some flesh with which to work, but on the ankle? Uh-uh. In a way, this was even worse than when I’d gored my foot. That had been an accident, and the initial pain had subsided quickly. This was self-induced agony, and it wasn’t going to end anytime soon.

“Oh, God!” I whined, although I tried to smile as I said it. When Alexandra, clearly frightened, crawled under the table, I realized it might have been a slight miscalculation on my part to bring her along. Just what she needed: a lingering image of her father being tortured like Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man.

I want you to think very carefully, Sean, and tell me, is it safe?

“Do you want to come under here with me, Daddy?”

“No, Ali, I’m okay.” I smiled at her, then turned away and clenched my teeth. The other guys were supportive, although they did laugh even as they offered encouragement. Such was the gallows atmosphere that surrounded the event. Toward the end of the procedure, Roger began scraping with the needle, in an effort to spread the ink evenly and deeply. That was the worst part, like having periodontal work without the novocaine. The fact that some people, like Roger, who looked like Ray Bradbury’s Illustrated Man, regularly and willingly give themselves over to this kind of pain seemed patently absurd to me. When the needle finally stopped and Roger said, “Done,” I breathed a sigh of relief and rolled off the table, as weak in the knees as a seasick tourist returning from a whale watch. Within seconds, though, the pain was gone, replaced by a flush of pride and excitement.

I’d done it! I’d gotten my first tattoo!

Next up was Ian, who chose to have his shoulder tattooed. I held his right arm while Roger snapped on a fresh latex glove and went to work. As we tried to ritualize the experience by simultaneously teasing and comforting each other, the tattoo shop took on the feel of a pirate ship—Arrh, maties!—and at the center of it all was Roger, a massively tattooed fifty-something Kiwi with a voice like sandpaper and a fiercely individualistic outlook on the world. Or so he wanted us to believe.

“You know what I am?” Roger growled at one point. “I’m a bloody anarchist!”

“Really?” I said. “How long did you say this shop has been here?”

“About thirty-five years, give or take.”

“Oh, no offense, Roger, but after thirty-five years, you’re pretty much part of the establishment, aren’t you?”

Roger pulled the needle away from Ian’s shoulder, cocked his head in my direction, and smiled.

“Well, I’m sort of on the fringe. Know what I mean?”

That was the highlight of the day: the self-proclaimed anarchist tattooing the gay, knighted legend of stage and screen. I just loved that moment. But it was all fun. We stayed for the better part of two hours, until each of us had been stamped. Orlando was tattooed on the right forearm, Viggo and Dom on the shoulder, Elijah on the lower part of his belly, near the hipbone, and Brett on the small of his back.

Afterward, when I proudly showed my tattoo to Peter Jackson, I was surprised and moved by his reaction.

“Wow, that’s great,” he said, and I could tell by the look in his eyes that he meant it. I would think it pleased Peter to know that our experience had been so profound, and that he had been the man chiefly responsible for that experience. He had inspired us and instilled within us a commitment that was unprecedented and permanent. Not until a year later, however, after the release of the first film, did I realize just how much Peter liked the idea of the Fellowship tattoo. That’s when he and producer Mark Ordesky got tattoos of their own: the number 10.

*   *   *

We took a vow to keep the bond private and spiritual in nature. Granted, there was no way to prevent the media from revealing that we had gotten tattoos—I think the news had leaked by the time we left Roger’s studio—but at least we could maintain a purity of purpose, and prevent hundreds of thousands of The Lord of the Rings fans from tattooing themselves with the elvish symbol for 9, by declining to reveal the image in public. We all agreed to that. No going on Leno or Letterman and flashing the tattoo for a national audience. That would cheapen the experience, tarnish the memory.

Ah, the best laid plans … The Fellowship tattoo became big news in the entertainment world; everywhere we went, people asked to see it. At first we refused, but we’ve all cracked at some point. My moment of shame—admittedly, the most egregious and knuckleheaded offense committed by any of us—came with Steve Kmetko of the E! network, during a broadcast of E! News Live.

“Hey, you know Ian McKellen showed us his tattoo the other day,” Steve said. “We want to see yours, too.”

“Really? Ian?”

“He sure did.”

“I don’t know, Steve. I mean, we made a pact.”

“Well, I guess someone forgot to tell Ian, because we saw his tattoo.”

Hell, if Ian is going to show his tattoo, I guess I can, too.

With that I rolled up my pants leg and the camera zoomed in and got a nice close-up of my tattoo, which immediately made its way to the Internet, effectively killing the secret we had promised to take to our graves. But at least I wasn’t the only person—or even the first person—to have broken the vow.

Or so I thought.

As I walked off the set, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I’d been duped, that Steve had tricked me in order to be the first person to broadcast an image of the Fellowship tattoo. So I pulled out my cell phone and placed a call to Ian. I asked him if he had also succumbed to the urges of the wily journalist Steve Kmetko and displayed his tattoo on television.

“No, Sean, I did not,” Ian said. In his voice was a hint of condescension, as if this was precisely the sort of gaffe he expected of me. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t shown it to anyone, just as we agreed.”

I hung up the phone and stood there, shaking.

Kmetko, you son of a bitch!

The next time I saw Steve, I playfully accused him of lying to me, which he denied. And then I got to thinking about it: Wait a minute. Maybe Ian was lying! Or they were both playing with me. Anyway, I called Elijah and told him I’d screwed up. He was terribly disappointed in me for being stupid and for giving such a lame excuse. But you know what? He forgave me. And, of course, he later revealed his tattoo as well.

*   *   *

The wrap party is a Hollywood tradition, an opportunity for the studio to thank everyone for all their hard work, a chance for cast and crew to say farewell, and to celebrate the end of the journey. At one point, I went through a phase during which I didn’t like wrap parties and often opted to skip town before they were held. Why? Sometimes, I suppose, it was because I didn’t feel particularly proud of the work I’d done and thus wasn’t interested in paying tribute to it. I simply wanted it in the rearview mirror. Other times, on the better films, I couldn’t bring myself to say good-bye. So I’d just leave.

At the end of filming The Lord of the Rings, though, I was okay with it. I was happy to be leaving, happy to be saying good-bye to people, happy the movie was over. It felt right, as though we’d all been there long enough and done all that we could to make The Lord of the Rings the best it could be. I was proud of what we’d accomplished, but I was also tired and homesick and ready to move on to the next phase of my life, whatever that might mean. (I certainly didn’t comprehend just how completely the movies would come to dominate my career, or that the roller-coaster ride was, in fact, just beginning.)

So Christine and I got a babysitter, I pulled on a red Dr. Seuss sweater bearing the words “I am Sam,” and we went to the wrap party, which had to be one of the biggest in the history of cinema. By “big,” I don’t mean lavish. I mean just plain big, as in huge. The party was held at a warehouse in downtown Wellington, near the waterfront. There were searchlights outside and mountains of food within. Generally speaking, it was a casual and comfortable affair, but sprawling, as well; intimacy is difficult when there are more than a thousand guests.

As always happens at these affairs, great gobs of time were devoted to the exchanging of gifts. The actors, collectively, presented Peter with a mockette, courtesy of the makeup wizards at Weta Workshop. Mockettes are little sculptures used as models for all the different fictional characters in the films. The models would be scanned into a computer and the digital gurus would build off those, so the images that appeared on screen were not just based on drawings, but three-dimensional characters. Anyway, we had a mockette created for Peter, and of course it looked not only like Peter, but also like a hobbit: big feet, wild, unruly hair, and a bemused expression on its face. Peter seemed genuinely touched by the gift, and I remember feeling somewhat disappointed in myself for not putting more effort into the process. Elijah and I had gotten the cards done, and we had written notes to people, but here in the swirl of celebration our efforts seemed insufficient.

Bliss Macgillicuddy, my makeup artist, gave me a rather extraordinary gift, an enormous collage of pictures and images encased in Plexiglas. There was a head shot illustrated by Alan Lee; photos of me with Elijah; me with Peter, Dom, Billy; my scale double and chess partner, Kiran “B. K.” Shah; everyone. What struck me about the gift was not just the time and thought that went into it, but that I seemed to be smiling in virtually every photo. Clearly, Bliss was trying to send me a message.

“See, you don’t have to be such a sourpuss. You really did have a good time, and you connected with a lot of people in a lot of meaningful ways.”

Leave it to the makeup artist to deliver a gentle kick in the ass. Bliss routinely allowed me to go through some of my interior monologue of anguish and insecurity with her; she would let me be grumpy and not hold it against me. She was wonderful, and I appreciated her thoughtfulness as much as her professionalism and attention to detail.

The party went on for hours. There was lots of eating and drinking and dancing, as well as the customary viewing of a gag reel, wherein some of the funniest outtakes of the production were compiled in a single, gut-busting collection. I remember laughing pretty hard at the gag reel, but also feeling sad that I wasn’t in more of it; I knew that my absence could be attributed to the fact that I had internalized the process too much and hadn’t allowed myself to become part of everyone’s fun.

Most of my colleagues, however, were forgiving of my tendency to take things too seriously, and that included Peter and Fran. Although we had several different “good-bye” moments, the official farewell occurred at their house during a dinner for the acting ensemble. Each of us was presented with a green bound yearbook with The Lord of the Rings etched into the spine. Between the covers was a collection of beautiful photographs that eloquently told the story of the making of the trilogy. And each book was inscribed with a personalized note. Mine included a few words of thanks for the work I had done, and reassurance that the performance had been meaningful and would one day resonate with audiences. Then came the kicker, the part about my wife and daughter, a reminder of why I had admired Peter and Fran in the first place: they were the coolest couple and the hippest parents on the planet.

“Thank you for giving us Christine and Alexandra,” they wrote, “and for bringing them into our lives.”

I closed the yearbook and ran my hand over the spine. I looked at Fran and Peter. And then I started to cry.