CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

In September 2003 I found myself at a postproduction sound facility in London, doing work on the final installment of the trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. As with each of the first two films, this one was completed under enormous deadline pressure. I wonder sometimes how Peter handled it. There was so much at stake, and yet he seemed unfazed by it all. Here we were, less than three months before the film’s scheduled release date, and still there was an enormous amount of work to be done: the looping of dialogue, the refining of computer animation, the musical score (which is an awesome task in itself, and the importance of which can’t be overlooked). All of these things had to be in order by December. There were, after all, publicity and marketing schedules to be met, and premiere dates that had been set in stone. To be even one day late would have serious repercussions.

Not that there was any cause for concern, as it turned out. I was granted the privilege of screening an early cut of a large portion of The Return of the King in London, and was utterly mesmerized by what I saw. The movie was astonishingly good—a nearly perfect conclusion to the trilogy. On a more personal level, it represented Samwise Gamgee as everything I hoped he would be. Philippa was in charge of the screening. She came to me after a week of looping, before we got to the final reels involving all of the heavy crying scenes, and explained that Fran and Peter had agreed to let me watch the movie to help facilitate the emotion required to recreate the climactic scenes on Mount Doom. In other words, to put me in the proper frame of mind.

So I sat on a couch in front of the mixing board, with only Philippa and a couple of technicians in the room, and I watched. To say I was moved would be the understatement of my career. I started bawling about halfway through the footage and didn’t stop until well after it had ended. I cried when Sam was on-screen, and I cried when he wasn’t on-screen. I cried when Gollum tricked Frodo into believing that Sam had betrayed him, and I cried when Sam cradled Frodo on the side of Mount Doom, as a river of lava threatened to sweep them away “at the end of all things.” When Alexandra appeared at my side, playing the role of Sam’s daughter, and I heard her tiny whisper of a voice (her lines had not yet been dubbed over by Frodo’s narration), I could barely see the screen through the haze of my tears. I don’t think I’ve ever cried that hard in my entire life.

The anxiety and tension, the doubt and disappointment, the pride and gratification—all were mixed together and flooded out, and I became this throbbing, sobbing mass. For me, The Lord of the Rings had been like a five-year period of psychoanalysis. Now it was over.

And Peter had done right by me.

*   *   *

In April 2000, some eighteen months before the first film hit the theaters, an online preview trailer for The Fellowship of the Ring drew approximately 1.7 million hits in less than twenty-four hours. In January 2001, the official Lord of the Rings website was launched. In its first week, the site attracted an astounding forty-one million visitors! And this was still ten months prior to the film’s release. Small wonder that Gordon Paddison, senior vice president in New Line’s marketing department, felt like he had one of the best jobs in the world.

“The Lord of the Rings has a global prebuilt fan base,” Paddison said. “We just embraced that community.”

Fans repeatedly and overwhelmingly returned the embrace. The Fellowship of the Ring grossed more than $860 million worldwide. The Two Towers earned in excess of $910 million. Both are among the top ten grossing films in history.

But The Lord of the Rings proved to be more than just a commercial success. It was that rarest of Hollywood creatures: a film (or in this case, films) that was warmly received by both critics and moviegoers. The Fellowship of the Ring, in fact, was one of the most decorated films released in 2001, earning not only rave reviews from critics across the country but also thirteen Academy Award nominations, including best picture. The Two Towers was similarly lauded, and also was nominated for an Academy Award, as the best film of 2002.

I’ve agreed not to talk about my finances with regard to the success of the pictures. But suffice it to say that in the fall of 2003, for the first time in my life, I had a pretty good sense that if I played my cards right with my career, I would be able to support my family and live comfortably for the foreseeable future. So I sat there, as the lights came up, utterly drained. When the film ended, Philippa wrapped her arms around me and let me cry on her shoulder for a few minutes. After I collected myself, I left the studio and got in my car. On the way back to my hotel I called Peter and thanked him. Later I called my agent and manager and told them that everything I had hinted at, everything I believed would happen once people saw the third movie, was about to come true.

“Will there be Oscar talk?” the agent asked.

I thought about it for only a second or two.

“You know what? I think I might get nominated.”

To be honest, in the afterglow of that screening, I didn’t see how I could miss.

*   *   *

My attitude changed in late November when I saw the movie in its final version, the version that would be released to the public. A private screening had been arranged in Wellington prior to the official world premiere and the tidal wave of publicity that would follow. This was a different experience, one that left me feeling vaguely uneasy and even a bit disappointed. Liv Tyler was sitting next to me, and she seemed delighted with it. So did Andy Serkis, and with good reason. The movie, of course, opens with Andy in hobbit form, as Smeagol, and becomes a showcase for the character’s split personality and the talent of the actor behind it. I remember feeling thrilled for Andy, but it was weird: I wasn’t really drawn into the movie, mainly because I was too focused on the ways in which it differed from the version I had seen in London. Once I realized that a particular scene had come and gone—or just “gone,” since it had been cut from the final version—I started getting a negative feeling that I couldn’t shake. I just didn’t like the movie as much.

Since then, I’ve come to my senses. Fans loved The Return of the King, probably more than either of the first two films. I’ve seen it six times now, and my enjoyment and appreciation have increased with each viewing. But I’m trying to be honest about how I felt, and I can’t deny that when I saw the movie in New Zealand in its completed form, I was disappointed. Granted, it was a selfish reaction, one that stemmed primarily from the fact that Sam’s screen time had been reduced. There was, for example, a scene right before Gollum tricks Frodo into believing that Sam has eaten the last of their dwindling supply of food. Sam grabs Gollum by the throat and warns the creature, “If one hair is out of place on his head … no more Slinker, no more Stinker. You’re gone!” Gollum looks at Sam with fear in his eyes, and it’s a moment of real strength and heroism, so that the swing from tough guy to sniveling, crying victim (“Don’t send me away, Mr. Frodo; it’s not true!”) is so much stronger. When I realized that scene had been cut, the excitement and enthusiasm were sucked out of me, replaced by sadness.

The orc encampment is another example. Frodo and Sam don armor and say, “We’ve done it; they’re moving off. A bit of luck at last.” And then all of a sudden there’s this whole sequence where the orcs come around the corner, and they slap us and whip us and put us in their column, and we’re marching with the bad guys. Then I pick a mock fight with Frodo to distract the orcs so that we can escape. That’s followed by an incredible scene on the Gorgoroth plains, where an exhausted Frodo and Sam are slumped against each other, looking up at the night sky. Sam sees a star and observes, “In the end, a shadow is only a passing thing, Mr. Frodo. Darkness will fade.” Basically, it’s an echo of Sam’s speech at the end of the second film, and almost as good. It was beautifully written and sensitively directed by Fran, with a violin concerto providing accompaniment. I think people were crying as we performed that scene, and I was so happy with the way it turned out in the film. But now it was gone, along with the miles and miles of walking and suffering endured by Sam and Frodo in their march to Morder. Now I thought, The orc armor is on, it’s off, they’re at the top of the mountain … what? How did that happen?

It just felt truncated to me. It felt like something less than what it had been.

And yet …

The Return of the King was a three-hour-and-fifteen-minute movie, and a very good one at that. I’m sure every director would like to present to the public a five-hour version of his movie, a version that is true to his artistic vision. But that’s just not possible. And it wasn’t possible in the case of The Return of the King. I know that now, and I knew it then. Nevertheless, each time I noticed a scene had been the slightest bit altered from my expectations, it felt wrong to me, and I began to wonder if others noticed, if they were enjoying the film or suffering from the same doubts that I experienced.

Simply put, I lost touch.

Christine was also sitting near me at the screening in New Zealand, and she was obviously and visibly moved by it. Unfortunately, I ruined it for her. We went right from the screening over to a little gathering at Philippa’s house (which is adjacent to Peter and Fran’s), and as soon as I got Christine alone, I dumped all my doubt and anxiety on her. I was so upset and uncomfortable that I couldn’t think of anything positive to say. The idea of doing publicity, which would begin with a round of interviews that very night, was daunting. What would I say? “You should have seen the other version—now that was a movie!” Somehow I don’t think that would have gone over well.

“They’ve ruined it!” I whined to Christine. “How am I going to get through this?”

To which she replied, in not so many words, “What is wrong with you?”

Christine thought I was an idiot; she thought I was completely out of my mind, that The Return of the King represented the best work I had ever done, and that only someone with an egregiously distorted view of reality would recognize it as anything else. Her response was not without merit. You can see how the film turned out. Certainly I wasn’t going to get any sympathy from the other actors, all of whom felt the sting of the editor’s shears more acutely than I had. I’d have to be blind not to recognize that Sam’s is one of the best roles in the third movie, that he is in some sense the hero of the film, and that I am allowed to shine as an actor as much as anyone in the ensemble. I was going to be disappointed about that!? How ungrateful could I be? But I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.

“Am I crazy?” I whispered to Elijah at one point, hoping that he might sympathize, since he, too, had seen an earlier version of the film. “I feel heartbroken.”

“Heartbroken? That’s a little strong, don’t you think? It’s a great movie.”

“Is it?”

“Uhhhh, yeah. It is.”

“Because I didn’t care as much this time. I didn’t feel.”

As was often the case, Elijah’s grasp on objectivity was superior to mine. Eventually, after some relentless prodding on my part, he agreed that the emotional impact of our scenes on the side of Mount Doom was slightly diminished. But only slightly, and not to a degree that bothered him. Elijah was able to see the movie for what it was: a brilliant piece of filmmaking and a technological marvel. I saw it as a slap in the face. How warped is that? In retrospect, I can identify that day as a rite of passage: I’d finally gotten too close to have any perspective whatsoever.

Now, Christopher Lee? There’s a man who had reason to be disappointed. Saruman, the embodiment of evil and arguably the most compelling character in The Two Towers, was nowhere to be found in The Return of the King. Scenes depicting Saruman’s downfall were filmed, of course, but in the end, Peter explained, they didn’t work in the third film, and so Saruman’s departure occurred off-screen, as mere backstory. And Christopher was left on the cutting-room floor. Such is the business of making movies. Tough, sometimes brutal decisions must be made.

Nevertheless, I felt truly bad for Christopher, with whom I’d developed an extraordinarily strong friendship on the set, a friendship cemented during one particularly long flight from Auckland to Los Angeles. Christopher is a talker like I’m a talker. Maybe even more so, if that’s possible. He’s got unbelievable stories to tell, and I enjoyed quizzing him on his past and his experiences, and listening to him and learning from him. I think he was happy to have me feeling that way. At one point he even showed me a script because he thought I was perfect for the lead. The project ultimately wound up in limbo, as so many do, but I appreciated Christopher’s effort. That’s the way it’s supposed to work: the older actor reaches out to the younger actor. He recognized that I could do the role, the leading-man part, which was flattering and appreciated.

When Christopher discovered that he had been cut from The Return of the King, he called me in South Africa, where I was filming another movie. Listening to him, I realized that I had no reason to be upset about what had happened to Sam. Christopher was crestfallen and offended and pissed off, largely because the decision had been made so late and he’d already gone out publicly in support of the movie. Now he had egg on his face.

Me? I was a supporting character thrust into a starring role. I was one of the heroes of the third film. I was the actor who, as Peter often noted, was making audiences cry. Sam would have been ashamed of my thoughts and feelings.

The seemingly endless series of premieres helped knock a little sense into me. Appropriately enough, the world premiere was held in New Zealand on December 1, 2003, a day that remains one of the most memorable of my life. It included a parade through the streets of Wellington in front of more than a hundred thousand screaming fans. Granted, roughly ninety thousand of them were girls pleading with Orlando to remove some article of clothing or to autograph a portion of their suddenly bared anatomy, but still it was a great experience. I sat next to John Rhys-Davies during the parade, and at one point we spotted Orlando’s mother in the crowd and invited her to jump in with us. She sat almost on John’s lap as we passed countless throngs of adoring female fans, some of them lifting their skirts or lowering their blouses in the hope of attracting Orlando’s attention.

“Now, now!” John would shout. “Please, ladies, this is Orlando’s mum here. Have a bit of respect!”

The parade automatically put me in the proper frame of mind. Thankfully, I am not so self-involved as to be oblivious to the people who matter: the fans who buy tickets and make it possible for me to earn a living as an actor. It would have been a total disavowal of their feelings not to match their enthusiasm. I watched the movie that night and actually enjoyed it; mainly, I enjoyed their reaction to it. When I felt their positive response to the story, and to the character of Sam in particular, I was genuinely moved, and slowly I began to see things from Peter’s perspective.

Hmmmm, maybe that’s why he cut the scene, because it connects the story in a certain way.

The doubt wasn’t erased all at once, mind you. It happened over the course of several weeks and repeated viewings, and endless hours sitting in the dark, listening to the snivels and sobs of both casual fans and hardened Tolkien critics. In the end, it was the fans who won me over, who embraced the movie and Sam and helped me realize how silly and self-centered I’d been. The changes that Peter had made left me concerned that fans would be disappointed, but they weren’t. Far, far from it. When I saw the premiere in Wellington, I began to understand that the fans of the movie, and the feelings of the fans, were bigger than the movie itself. That understanding deepened with each viewing. The third time I saw the movie, at the Los Angeles premiere, I gave myself over to the experience. This was at the Mann Village Theater in Westwood Village, not far from the Bruin Theater, where I had worked as a kid. It was a friendly, hometown kind of crowd—they were applauding for my character, crying with the character—and I just sat back and went along for the ride. For the first time since London, I was happy with what I saw on the screen.

None of the reviews had come in at that point, so I wasn’t sure what critics would think (aside from the obvious—that they would express overwhelming appreciation for the directorial skill of Peter Jackson). But when we started doing interviews, there was a rhythm of positive energy, especially as it applied to the character of Sam and my work in the film. After a while, I almost became skeptical, like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, for someone to rip me apart: “The Return of the King is a brilliant example of modern cinema, a sweeping epic that seamlessly blends live action and computer-generated effects like no film in history … a film so powerful that not even the melodramatic Sean Astin, as a weepy Samwise Gamgee, can ruin the experience.”

Something like that.

But it didn’t happen. Audiences adored the film. Critics were kind. Within a few weeks after the movie’s release, it was clear that there would be no backlash, that a broad cross section of people had voiced their approval, and most of the meaningful votes were in. I don’t know if I had any conception of how the ensemble would be acknowledged. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to be recognized for my work. But I did not want that recognition at the expense of any of the other actors, so I found myself getting really uncomfortable if someone, especially a journalist, said, “Hey, you’re the guy!” I liked it and sort of wanted it to continue, but in a slightly different way, because it almost felt as if I were stealing the thunder of other performers. Maybe I’d earned that moment by standing patiently in the shadows for the better part of four years, but it still made me a bit queasy.

Bernard Hill (who played Theodin) and I have had some moments where I could tell he was no less affectionate or caring—he’s been extraordinarily complimentary—but I could read the disappointment on his face when the attention turned my way. English actors, in my experience, are great at handling that sort of thing. Their reaction is, Yeah, that hurts. Now let’s move on. I honestly believe that Bernard did some of the best work in The Lord of the Rings, and so it feels lousy to have contributed to his disappointment in some way.

I’ve been on both sides of the equation, so I know how uncomfortable it can be for everyone involved when a member of an ensemble is suddenly singled out. It happened in front of the French press corps, when Liv Tyler became the center of attention, with everyone taking pictures of her, screaming, “Liv, Liv, Liv!” She was surrounded by a dozen actors who had invested infinitely more blood, sweat, and tears, but because Liv is a superstar, a beautiful young woman, and a huge, bankable commodity in the European and Asian markets, she naturally outshines most mere mortals. On a night intended to honor the film as a collaborative venture, even Peter Jackson was eclipsed by her. None of this was Liv’s fault. She’s a delightful woman who has earned her stardom and success. But the response was disproportionate with people’s excitement, simply because of their preconceived notions of fame and celebrity.

Imagine Orlando at … well, imagine Orlando almost anywhere. Chances are, eighty percent of the crowd is there to see him. Everyone has developed a sense of humor about that, and we all have pride in his success, but there’s also a part of you that sometimes says, What the hell am I doing here? A lot of people have had moments to shine throughout the process, but there have been a few people who have been allowed to shine more than others. With the release of The Return of the King, the spotlight fell on me, and while I won’t deny enjoying its warmth, I can also say that there were times when it made me uncomfortable. The moments I enjoyed most were the public appearances that ended with a giant curtain call, with each member of the acting ensemble taking a turn onstage and basking in the applause of the audience.

Nowhere was this type of response more gratifying and enlightening than at New York’s Lincoln Center, where more than a thousand people paid one hundred dollars apiece for the chance to take part in a tribute to The Lord of the Rings. All three films were screened in a single day, each one introduced by members of the ensemble. Every time we took the stage, we received a standing ovation. I was absolutely blown away by this response. Because I’d been reading scripts and going to meetings and doing interviews—and because I had flown in just a few hours before the event—I hadn’t slept for the better part of two days, so my senses were slightly dulled. But somewhere between the hotel and the big SUV in which we were shuttled around, I wiped the sand from my eyes and prepared for what I suspected would be a meaningful event. It was much more than that. The crowd didn’t want us to leave. And what a crowd it was! Teenage boys, infatuated girls, fifty-something hippies—an incredibly broad spectrum. One of the first things we did was ask for a show of hands.

“How many of you have already seen the third movie?”

To my astonishment, virtually every person in the room raised his or her hand. These people were so enamored of The Lord of the Rings that they were willing to pay a hundred bucks to see the entire trilogy—even though they’d already seen it! That’s how much it meant to them. That’s how much we meant to them.

An actor should never take that sort of loyal support for granted. On some level, of course, it’s ludicrous. At least with athletes and dancers and musicians, there is a moment of expertise, something that happens right before the eyes of the audience in real time that merits a response—a slam dunk, a home run, a perfectly executed concerto. But with us, well, we had done the work so long ago. So to be given an ovation for it—well, sometimes you just feel unworthy of the adulation. And yet it happened. Over and over. People rose out of their seats and roared their approval. It was profoundly moving for me as a performer.

And more than a little overwhelming …