CHAPTER SEVEN

I still couldn’t read the book.

I tried. Many times. Not having the job or fretting about not getting the job was no longer a valid excuse, so I came up with another one: There’s no time to focus on it. This was true to the extent that in the month between getting the job and leaving for New Zealand, Christine and I had innumerable tasks to keep us busy.

Even though we were going to be out of the country for the next year and a half, we had made a decision to take up residence, however briefly, in our newly acquired home. That proved to be another major strategic mistake, for it needlessly complicated lives that were already complicated enough. We did this for reasons that were largely sentimental. First, we wanted to convince ourselves that everything would be fine, that I could pay for the house, take possession of it, and treat it like a home. And second, we wanted to teach our daughter, Alexandra, what we hoped would be a valuable lesson—that moving from house to house is a natural part of life, and not necessarily traumatic. We wanted her to see her new room, sleep in it, and feel comfortable there. Christine and I didn’t have it in our hearts (or heads) to tell her, “We’re going on an adventure, but you’ll have your own room in New Zealand.” We wanted Alexandra to feel like her real home was in the United States, in Los Angeles. That was probably not as important as we made it out to be, since she was only two years old at the time. But I wanted her to recognize her room when we came back, which I thought would happen far sooner than it did.

We’d been warned that the production would require us to be on location for eighteen months, with very few breaks, but I didn’t really believe this. Although I had feigned belief in the warning, I honestly felt that things would work out differently, that at some point we’d all be furloughed for a month or six weeks, and in that time the whole family would return to L.A. and get reacquainted with our new house. The home I felt I deserved to be in, which, I know (and I knew it then), is such a ludicrous idea—it’s amazing the power of the human mind, the way you can convince yourself that you are entitled to stuff.

It was a neat house. Situated in the Encino Hills, it had a long, private driveway and a serpentine wall and a courtyard with Spanish tile. It wasn’t terribly big, but it was a really cool, interesting house, with white shutters on the doors and a sturdy granite-topped island in the kitchen. It felt like the kind of place an artist would live in, and I was proud to be one of its new owners. Sometimes we’d see deer nibbling outside the window, which in Los Angeles is not a common sight. It’s easy for me to understand why people in Nepal or any great mountainous region like to live high in the hills. You wake up in the morning and look out over the vista, and you can’t help but feel alive. Such a view can have an intoxicating effect. I’d go out in the morning and stand there like General Patton, looking out over the valley—my valley—where I had lived for eight years, and to the hills beyond. The mountain I was standing on was where I’d spent the first twenty years of my life, and I felt some silly kind of power that wasn’t real at all but that somehow gave me a sense of security and value.

Had I only known that for eighteen months my dream house would become little more than an expensive and glorified kennel for our dog and a temporary residence for an assortment of house sitters (including my brother Tom, who helped defray some of the costs and gave a real sense of family to the house), I might have exhibited a bit more common sense.

*   *   *

The scripts landed with a thud! smacking the granite countertop like a bag of wet cement. It was the first time I had seen them, three great slabs of paper, each bound separately by large metal hoops, each fat enough to represent not just a single film, but a four-hour miniseries, hand-delivered by a studio emissary. This was a sacred moment, one I had anticipated with escalating enthusiasm, the grand unveiling of the story. Before the studio would agree to deliver the scripts, I, like all of the actors in the movie, was required to sign a confidentiality and nondisclosure agreement. In no uncertain terms, it stated that the material I was going to read, and the events I would witness while in New Zealand, were industry secrets and thus proprietary in nature.

On a superficial level this was not unusual. Scripts and story lines are the subject of intense secrecy in Hollywood. Warren Beatty wouldn’t give a full script to anybody; he would only issue a few pages at a time, and then he’d pull them back and have them destroyed. Why? For reasons known only to him, although one can reasonably presume that it was so that no one would know what was happening in the story. We liked to joke that no one ever seemed to know what was going on with Warren, or what he had in mind with the screenplay, or even if there really was a screenplay. He had an assistant who always seemed to be at his side, and we wondered whether she was privy to information that no one else had—like what the hell the story was about—and if so, did she carry cyanide capsules to be taken in the event she was captured by someone who might want to interrogate her and leak crucial plot points to an eager moviegoing public?

Why such secrecy? I don’t know. To maintain the element of surprise, perhaps. On The Goonies, Steven Spielberg wanted to promote a sense of adventure, so he and Dick Donner once blindfolded several members of the young cast and backed us onto a set that had been designed to look like a pirate ship. The feeling the two wanted to capture on film was the feeling they wanted the audience to have: the feeling of surprise, of wonder and awe. For Warren, though, I think it had more to do with his political ideas driving the movie, and not wanting other people to sabotage the process. To that end, he keeps everyone involved a little disoriented. For many directors and studio executives and writers, it comes down to the twin issues of privacy and piracy. No one wants their ideas stolen, of course. And it’s important to control the flow of information, to mount a public relations and marketing campaign on a schedule that best suits the needs of the people who are most heavily invested in the process. True or not, if word leaks out that a script isn’t what it should be, the subsequent wave of negativity can stop a project in its tracks. The paranoia is even more palpable now, thanks to the incredible scope and power of the Internet. Information and misinformation, not to mention actual words from a script, can go worldwide in a heartbeat.

The power of the Internet is best reflected by a man named Harry Knowles, who runs a Web site called Ain’t It Cool News. A self-proclaimed (and widely acknowledged) ambassador for the fans, Knowles is a movie lover who somehow manages to get his hands on almost everything: script synopses, the latest deals, actors’ and directors’ salaries, behind-the-scenes gossip from movie sets. He predicts which movies are likely to be successful, and which are likely to fail, not merely by guessing, but by using the mountains of legitimate information he accumulates. As a result, Harry Knowles, despite living in Texas, is considered one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, and the studios, which once loathed and denigrated him, now actively court him.

As I understand it, Peter Jackson and Harry Knowles are fairly tight. Despite his newly acquired status as a Hollywood titan, Peter remains something of an iconoclast, and I think there is a mutual respect between Knowles and him. Each had a genuine desire to see The Lord of the Rings done right, and to sincerely enoble the efforts of the fans. After all, Peter is a fan, too. He wanted to stoke the flames of the fans’ passion, so he gave them little things, tidbits of information to whet their appetite. But not too much. Amazingly enough, almost nothing appeared on Knowles’s website that Peter did not want to be there. That’s one of the many admirable things about Peter: he understands and appreciates the fandom, and so he interacts comfortably with people like Harry Knowles. They complement each other in a power corridor, and there’s nothing the studios can do about it. Nor should they. Peter and Harry operated in the interest of the fans, and Harry, grateful for a bit of early access, honored his friendship with Peter.

In a much broader sense, Peter develops important relationships with important people based on trust and mutual respect. I don’t think Peter gives trust too easily, and yet in my case, once I arrived in New Zealand, I felt as though he trusted me almost completely—and almost instantly. Of course, he would have known that I had signed the nondisclosure agreement by then, and that knowledge would most certainly assuage any fears that I or anyone involved might betray his confidence. But, I’m talking about a feeling between people, one of openness and honesty, a sense that not only are you free to express yourself, but that your thoughts and opinions are encouraged. Granted, the sword cuts both ways, because what you say counts with Peter and Fran, and if your thoughts are insincere or poorly developed, it won’t be lost on them. I say this from personal experience. More than once I’ve stumbled into a conversation or found myself making utterances that I’ve not wanted to stand behind upon further reflection. Peter and Fran can be very understanding and forgiving, but I’ve also seen what happens when people try to take advantage of them or behave too selfishly. I’ve watched Peter make a mental note and resolve to guard himself more closely in the future. I find it extraordinary that Peter doesn’t seem to hold grudges or to act out of malice or revenge. I like to think of him as a somewhat benevolent and more fully evolved creature than most, who by sheer force of will accomplishes spectacular feats and by the grace of his talent can afford to be generous of spirit. He can be exacting when he needs to be and rewarding when it’s earned.

Yet I can’t deny that I was somewhat nervous about signing this particular confidentiality clause, containing as it did some of the most onerous language I had ever seen. The agreement essentially stipulated that if I disclosed anything I’d seen in the process of making The Lord of the Rings, the studio could sue me for the entire cost of the movie, a figure that was estimated to be $270 million! That was slightly more than I had in my savings account, so you can understand my trepidation.

“Jesus! Should I sign this?” I asked my attorney.

“Well, that depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you want the part.”

Knowing I was in no position to demand a softening of the language in the confidentiality clause, I adopted the attitude of a soldier in a covert military operation and signed the agreement. However, I made it clear that I would remain true to the spirit of the contract only until the movies were released. I can understand and appreciate trade secrets and rights and all of that, and I did sincerely want to protect the movie. So I signed. But there was an ominous feeling to it. I was on the inside of this organization, and I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if the door suddenly slammed and I couldn’t get out. That’s a silly feeling, of course, because it was after all just a movie. I was going to work for New Line Cinema, not for the Pentagon or the CIA. Nevertheless, I felt like I was taking a chance by signing that agreement.

Any doubt that the stakes were higher than on a typical film was laid to rest when I got to New Zealand, and it became instantly apparent things were going to be done differently. Great sums of money had been invested, and the result was an unusual alliance between the production and the New Zealand government, from the department of immigration right down to the local law-enforcement officers. It was all done with great aplomb, mainly because Peter has such an easygoing, hippified personality, but you knew, if you were intelligent and reasonably observant, that things were different than they were in Hollywood. You realized when you passed the gate and the guard looked you in the eye that there were people who were not getting in. It didn’t feel like the studios in Los Angeles, where I can always talk my way onto a lot because I’m a child of that community and I’m not a threat, and they recognize me or my parents. Not in New Zealand. Uh-uh. When you crossed the threshold that separated the city of Wellington from the city within a city that served as the headquarters of The Lord of the Rings, you felt like you were entering the vortex. You felt like you were in Peter Jackson’s domain.

*   *   *

I had signed the confidentiality agreement, had agreed to play by the rules. Next came a series of clandestine conversations, the subject of which was the transference of information—specifically, the scripts. Typically, the discussions went something like this: “You signed the agreement? Good. You’ll have to talk to Jan next. She’s Peter’s assistant. She’ll tell you precisely when the scripts will arrive—right to the minute. You’ll have to be there to sign for them.”

I’d respond with a guttural, “Understood,” as if I were an undercover agent. Really, though, what I was thinking was: What’s the problem here? It’s just a script. But there was a culture of secrecy about it. When the scripts arrived, I opened the package and noticed immediately that the title page did not reflect the title of the movie, which caused me more than a little confusion. I spent five minutes trying to figure out the title page, at the center of which, in big bold letters, was the word “Jamboree.” Finally it dawned on me that this was a deception: a fake title on a fake page! Why? Well, imagine you’re an actor sitting in a coffee shop or some other public place, trying to combine a little work-related reading with some relaxation. That happens, although it’s not usually a great idea. The fake page allows for a degree of privacy. A fan might know you’re looking at a script, but at least this way he or she won’t know the name of it.

All in all, it was an impressive package. Most scripts are held together with brads, but this one had big circular binders, so the pages couldn’t be easily ripped out. There were watermarks, too, on every page. This in itself is not all that unusual: important scripts, those attached to “name” directors, or propped up by fat budgets, often have watermarks. But not like this. I had seen Steven Spielberg’s watermarks; I had seen Spike Lee’s. Usually they’re nothing more than a series of numerals: 001, 002, 003. Each person is assigned a particular code. But the watermarks on “Jamboree” were different. Across the first page, in red, were two words: Sean Astin

Seeing that watermark took my breath away. The notion that I was literally burned into the work of the director and writers left no doubt in my mind that I belonged in the movie. It’s hard to describe how that felt, not just turning each page and reading the story, but also seeing my name, over and over, a constant reminder that I was in the loop. On the first pass I merely looked through the script to see how many lines of dialogue were attributed to Samwise Gamgee, because I really didn’t know yet how vital or visible a character he really was. I had heard from others that Sam loomed large in the story, but having not yet finished the books and not having seen the scripts, I could only guess what that meant. I had agreed to do this movie and accept a specific salary without even knowing who the character was, which was quite a leap of faith, but an appropriate one, I thought, under the circumstances. A quick gallop through the scripts confirmed that belief: “Sam draws his sword and charges!”

Oh, that is so cool! I’m going to get to charge with a sword!

I was giddy, despite the fact that while Sam was deeply involved in the plot and received a fair amount of screen time, it was also apparent that there were huge chunks of story where he wasn’t involved at all. At least in the first script. Then I flipped through the second script and the third. Hundreds of pages in roughly ten minutes. I couldn’t really engage the scripts at first, so distracting was the appearance of my name, the image of Sam brandishing swords, the secrecy surrounding the whole project, and the thought of what the movie might be. On that first day I could manage no more than a cursory glance, a sizing up, perhaps, of my own character and the decision I had made. And it didn’t seem half bad.

*   *   *

Although I lacked a deep understanding of the story, it came as no surprise to learn that inhabiting the role of Sam would require more than mere emotional immersion. The Lord of the Rings was a fantasy, Middle-earth was a place that existed only in the mind of J. R. R. Tolkien, and hobbits were tiny, noble creatures with pointy ears and bulbous, hairy feet. Bringing these characters to life would involve not only computer-generated wizardry, but also extensive use of makeup and prosthetics. The transformation, for me, began in Beverly Hills, at the Ma Maison Sofitel hotel.

I had been racing around for days, trying to tie up loose ends and prepare for the trip to New Zealand, when I received a phone call from the studio informing me that I had an appointment with Peter Owen to discuss my wig.

My wig?

This was a surprise only because I hadn’t given it much thought. I had seen pictures of hobbits, but hadn’t really concentrated on what I was supposed to look like. I was trusting, figuring I’d look like me and get absorbed into it. My body would be there, on location, and I’d give myself over to the process. I wanted to read the scripts when I could really read them (which turned out to be on the plane during the long flight to Wellington). There was so much else going on that I found it hard to absorb the scripts or to worry about how I’d become the character. Six weeks of rehearsal time had been built into the production schedule, so I wasn’t terribly concerned. By the time principal photography began, I’d be sharp. Unlike so many movies I’d done in the past, this was a major production in every sense of the word. I understood the importance of having my body and mind prepared, my family cared for, and my personal and professional lives in order. Everything else would be, well, handled. And for the most part, that’s the way it worked.

Step one on the agenda was my hair.

My own hair, by the way, is substantial. I may be short and I may have a little trouble with my weight, but hair is not a problem. In that area at least, I’m blessed. Follicly gifted, as it were. But I didn’t have hobbit hair, which in the movie would be long and matted, carefully crafted to give the appearance of being weathered. Rather than attempt to tame my own hair (or the hair of anyone on the production), it was far easier and more sensible to rely on a set of wigs. Upon hearing this, I reacted like a newcomer to the craft: Oh, I’ve heard about these guys. This is going to be cool! And so it was.

Peter Owen is a wonderfully stylish British gentleman, with baby-fine blond hair and long slender fingers, each adorned with a perfectly manicured nail. He welcomed me into his hotel suite with a flourish, and instantly I sensed something special about him and his place in the food chain. There was something about the way he carried himself, the fact that he was working out of this luxury hotel. He wasn’t just a hairstylist. He was an artist, and meeting him was tangible proof that on this production I’d be working with and be inspired by the most talented and successful people in their fields. It was exciting, but also daunting. Every step down the hallway and into the room provoked a feeling of nervousness. My agent had given me a snapshot of Peter’s career, including the names of several prominent clients for whom he had designed hairpieces. Not just movie stars either, but towering figures in business and media culture. If these people were willing to give themselves over to Peter, he had to be good. No, check that. He had to be great.

“Why, just yesterday I had a nice little session with Johnny Depp,” Peter said. That got my attention. Johnny Depp is not just a terrific actor; he’s a treasure. I told Johnny when we met at the premiere of Blow that, for an actor, meeting him was like going to Mecca. A bit too fawning? Maybe, but I didn’t care. It meant that much to me, in part because his story reminded me of my story. Okay, he’s an edgier, funkier guy (who else would show up at a premiere with Marilyn Manson at his side?), but there were similarities. Johnny had first made an impact doing mindless television piffle like 21 Jump Street. He had earned a lot of money but not much in the way of respect. Then he veered off on a different path, choosing projects based on their artistic merit, and somehow it all worked out. He went from teen idol to respected actor. That kind of stuff strikes a chord with me. You can do one type of job for money and another type of job for art, but whether the business views you as reaching critical mass before you view it yourself … well, that’s dangerous, that’s a gamble. But you really can continue to find yourself and challenge yourself. If you’re righteous and believe in yourself, you can come back. You can rise from the ashes.

“Why was Johnny here?” I asked Peter.

He laughed, fanned at the air with a hand. “Oh, we were just having a little play.”

That made me envious, the notion that some actors have so much money, and so much time, and so much passion for their craft that they will invest several hours just to see what types of characters they can come up with. Whether Peter was telling the truth or not—whether Johnny was really there, and whether they were “just having a little play,” I don’t know. I think he was simply trying to earn my trust by sharing stories of his A-list environment. Not that it was necessary, since he had me at “Hello.”

Peter was gracious, even eager, as I peppered him with questions. “No offense, but why do I even need a wig?” I asked, running a hand proudly through my own mop. “Can’t we just turn this into hobbit hair?”

“Well, maybe if your hair grows out nicely we’ll be pulling little bits through the wig lace,” he said softly. “But probably not.” Then he began talking about “scale doubles,” smaller men and women who more closely approximate the size of hobbits, and who would lend an air of authenticity by standing in for the actors in certain scenes. It was the first time I’d heard of this, or at least given it any serious consideration. Peter pulled out a piece of paper and sketched an image depicting Sam’s hair, and explained how the wig would make it easier for the actor and the double to mirror each other. That made sense, although upon hearing this news, my first reaction was, But I don’t want a double. I want it to be all me! Very quickly, however, that sentiment was replaced by an immense appreciation for how much thought and effort had already been invested in the process.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should acknowledge that I did experience a moment or two of anxiety over the issue of size, specifically, as it pertained to my own career and self-interests. I remember whining, half jokingly, to Nikki Mirisch, “Oh, great. I played the ball turret gunner, the smallest guy on the B-17, in Memphis Belle; I played Rudy, the smallest guy on the Notre Dame football team; and now I’m gonna play a three-foot-six hobbit. This will be the final nail in my coffin. I’m never going to be a big movie star because everyone will think I’m a miniature guy.” To which Nikki replied with a snort, “Get over it.”

Impressed as I was with Peter Owen, there wasn’t a whole lot to our session. He wrapped my head in some type of cellophane, fastened it with rubber bands to create a skullcap, and then yanked it off. Just like that, he had a model of my head—all that he needed to begin the process of creating Sam’s wig.

“That’s it?” I asked.

He nodded.

“What about the hair?”

Peter explained that most of it would likely come from female “donors” in Russia, which is, for some reason, apparently the nexus of the hair trade. I didn’t get to see or touch the hair that I’d be wearing for the next year and a half, but Peter did present a bunch of ponytail swatches for me to examine. He held them up to the light—as if we were choosing wallpaper patterns or fabric for a new sofa—and we both agreed that matching my natural hair color wouldn’t be a problem. And that was about it. We shook hands and I left Peter’s suite, emboldened by the feeling that Sam was in good hands.

Fascinating as this meeting was, it wasn’t the only meaningful interaction of the day, for while walking through the hotel lobby, who did I meet in person for the very first time? Elijah Wood. I would be Sam to his Frodo.

Elijah’s eyes opened wide as I came into view, and we literally ran to each other and embraced. I hugged him like a brother or a long-lost friend. That we had never spoken to each other seemed hard to comprehend in this setting, standing near the front door of the hotel, where each of us had gone specifically for the purpose of preparing for what would be the role of a lifetime (Elijah, too, had an appointment with Peter Owen). I knew enough about the story of The Lord of the Rings to know that the friendship between Frodo and Sam was considered not only central to the plot, but one of the most enduring relationships in literature. For the film to succeed, Elijah and I would have to make audiences believe in our friendship. He knew it and I knew it. So we fell against each other and hugged, then pulled back, and I remember just smiling at him nervously, excitedly, the two of us kind of studying each other quietly, as if we both were thinking, This is a little overwhelming, but we’re equal to it.

Elijah was exactly what I thought he’d be: small, not quite waifish, and friendly. He’s a little shorter than I am, and substantially thinner. My agents had assured Peter that I’d expand to the proper bulk before the start of principal photography, and I’d already taken the first sluggish steps down the road to sloth. Prior to getting the offer I was in the best shape of my life. At 160 pounds I was a lean, mean fighting machine, fit enough that I’d actually completed the Los Angeles Marathon. That’s the way I thought I looked, almost like a movie star, when I auditioned for Fran and Peter. Interestingly, I got the distinct impression that while Fran thought I was appealing, Peter was less convinced simply because, in his eyes, I didn’t look like Sam. That’s not how he saw the character. One of the things I discovered about Peter is that he is uniquely qualified to work outside the mainstream. While he loves American films and is a true student of American and world popular culture (this, after all, is a man who got his start in splatter films and who turned to a remake of King Kong as his follow-up to The Lord of the Rings), he is no slave to Hollywood convention. I was proud of the way I looked. I enjoyed having cheekbones and a flat stomach. It made me feel like I could be a leading man. To Peter, however, such things were distractions, obstacles to overcome in developing a character. To secure the role, I vowed to do less running and more eating. By the time I met Elijah, I’d already begun to morph into Sam.

Elijah had no such concerns. Wide-eyed and almost elfin in appearance, with an earnestness few actors can project, he was perfect for the role of Frodo. I had known for some time (well before I got the part of Sam) that New Line was involved in negotiations with Elijah, and I was looking forward to having a chance to work with him. I had followed Elijah’s career and admired the way he had managed it. He always seemed to be working on interesting stuff alongside major stars, in roles where he was really acting. I’m ten years older than Elijah, but I consider him a colleague, and I was at that time old enough to appreciate what he was doing as a young actor rising through the ranks. I looked up to him as an actor at least in part because of his ability to avoid being characterized as a child star insofar as that term is sometimes less than flattering. He had made better decisions than I had in traversing that path. He’d been more adept at choosing projects and negotiating with studio executives. I can recall seeing him in those old Lays potato chip commercials alongside Dan Quayle (“Want a potato chip, Mr. Vice President?”), and thinking, Wow, that kid is in the zone. He’s so smooth. Elijah conducted himself in a way that was almost unnaturally professional for one so young.

As he matured, it became clear that his youthful precociousness was not just a fluke, not something that would erode with time. Shortly before we met, Elijah had appeared in The Ice Storm, Ang Lee’s quietly haunting story of domestic upheaval in a suburban Connecticut neighborhood. His career was soaring. Critics and fans alike viewed him as a serious, nearly grown-up actor. But I had appreciated his abilities for some time. Elijah had appeared in Forever Young with Mel Gibson and North with Bruce Willis. He’d played Huck Finn and the Artful Dodger. He was still a teenager, but already he had a substantial body of work, and he was keenly aware of it.

I suppose I was a little bit envious, or maybe I just wished I had known what he seemed to know. When I was fifteen years old, I started my own business. I wanted to write, direct, act, and produce. I wanted to be all things to all people—and I still do, as a matter of fact. When Elijah was fifteen, he wanted to work with great filmmakers. That’s it. I think he understood the importance of those connections, and thus set out to obtain the best roles he could possibly find.

At that age, I just didn’t get it. I thought I was the guy who could be the great filmmaker, the person who could choose the scripts, maybe even write the scripts, and create the great movies. I understood the power of the medium, but when I was Elijah’s age, I wanted too much at once, and the thing that got sublimated was the research into other people’s film careers. I should have been finding out who was making what movies and figuring out how to get in them. I didn’t realize that I could learn about the environment and navigate it in a more sensible way by working with artists who appreciated the value of working with other artists. The smart way to approach a career is to realize how talented other people are and figure out a way to work with them.

That’s the way I viewed Peter Jackson and Elijah Wood. In fact, Elijah had become a significant component of my motivation for working on this project. There were six really interesting buzzwords or phrases attached to the film: Peter Jackson, Lord of the Rings, New Line, trilogy, New Zealand, and Elijah Wood. The importance you attach to something can often be distilled into something as simple as the way you answer a query. When people would ask me what I was working on, I revealed something with the way I responded. Sometimes I’d say something about working on an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, but more often I’d say, “I’m going to New Zealand for a year and a half to be Elijah Wood’s sidekick.” Why? I guess because it sounded cool, exotic. Who wouldn’t want to visit New Zealand? And who didn’t know Elijah Wood?

“Are you ready for this?” I asked him at the Ma Maison Sofitel.

He looked right at me, almost through me, with those impossibly blue, almost alien eyes, and smiled.

“Yeah, I am.”

It was clear that he wasn’t just saying what he thought I wanted to hear. There was an intensity to him, an honesty, that I found thoroughly inspiring, because what I was trying to project to him was an air of responsibility, of confidence, of nurturing: I know on some level what we’re about to undergo. And I’m prepared. But I was also feeling a small degree of anxiety stemming from not knowing whether Elijah was equally prepared. It turned out, of course, that neither one of us could possibly have known what we were in for, but I took comfort in hearing him say that he was ready and excited. It gave me strength and confidence.

That initial interaction lasted only a few minutes. Elijah was running late for his meeting with Peter, and my ride was waiting by the curb. We hugged again, said good-bye, and went our separate ways. The next time I would see him would be in New Zealand under very different circumstances.

*   *   *

Getting fitted for a wig was one thing; getting fitted for all of the other prosthetic devices that might be needed to create a hobbit was quite another. Central to this process was the construction of a face mold, which the makeup artists could then use to complete the character of Sam. This is a normal part of the preproduction stage of any movie involving characters who will be required to wear a significant amount of special-effects makeup, and to most actors it isn’t a big deal. However, if like me you happen to suffer from the occasional bout of claustrophobia, it is a very big deal indeed.

It had happened to me twice in England during the filming of Memphis Belle. The first incident occurred during a ten-day, premovie boot camp designed to foster camaraderie among the cast and, no doubt, give us a sort of war-weary look of authenticity. On the last day of boot camp we were taken to the entrance of a dirt tunnel that was nearly filled with water. The object of the exercise, the drill instructor said, was to crawl through the tunnel and exit the other side, several hundred yards away, without drowning.

“If it collapses,” he said flatly, twirling a pickax smoothly in his hands, “just try to hang on, mate. We’ll come get ya.”

This guy was a career hard-ass. His nickname was Bungee, and his skin was stretched so tight over his skull that he looked like a living, breathing cadaver. He’d served in the Falklands, where allegedly his specialty was interrogating prisoners as they dangled from the open door of a helicopter. As often as not, according to set lore, when Bungee extracted the necessary information, he or someone close by would pull out a knife, cut the prisoner’s lifeline, and watch him plummet earthward like a stone. Laughing, no doubt. Whether any of this was true, I don’t know, but it had the desired effect, which was to shrivel the sacks of a bunch of Hollywood dudes preparing to film a war movie.

We all knew that Bungee was trying to mess with us psychologically, but looking at the tunnel, the potential for a cave-in did seem real. I was the most overtly enthusiastic member of the Memphis Belle cast, so I was assigned the task of crawling through the tunnel first. Unfortunately, claustrophobia seized me, and I ended up going fourth. I made it, but not without enduring a healthy dose of anxiety, embarrassment, and humility.

That, however, was merely a prelude to what I experienced during the actual filming of the movie. I knew a time was going to come when I’d have to climb into the ball turret, wearing a heavy wool uniform, a leather jacket, a mask, and a helmet, and stay there for however long it took to film a particular scene. I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to do it. I think my claustrophobia stems from my childhood, when my big brothers were messing with me and rolled me up in a big carpet and stuck me in a closet. After listening to me scream and cry for a few seconds, they opened the door and let me fall out. Silly as it may sound, the memory of that brief imprisonment has never left me, and every so often it reaches out and makes life difficult, even now. For the most part I’ve learned how to manage it. But it takes effort. The night before we shot the ball-turret scene I was in my hotel room in London, barricading myself in a closet with a pile of clothes and blankets, forcing myself to breathe through the panic, hoping to desensitize myself and in that way prevent an anxiety attack on the set. To a degree, the strategy worked.

The turret sat atop some scaffolding, where it could be rotated back and forth, giving the illusion of height and movement, as if the occupant actually sat in the belly of a bomber. There was room for only a few people on the scaffolding, at least two of whom would have to like me enough to rescue me if something were to break, and they were rotating the turret and feeding me stuff through straws, bits and pieces of plastic that were designed to look like frozen saliva, as I fired hundreds of blanks from my machine gun. I was dizzy and tired and nervous when they opened the door and offered me a quick break and a drink of water. Then they slammed the door, resumed rotating and shooting, and suddenly I felt something rising in my throat. Whatever the cause, I felt like I was about to paint the inside of the turret, or at least my mask, with the contents of my stomach.

“Open the door,” I pleaded.

No response. Just more rotating.

“Please … open the door! Now!”

For just a second I could tell that the director, Michael Caton-Jones, was contemplating filming my distress. I don’t blame him, since it surely would have added a touch of realism, but I was nonetheless relieved when the door opened and I gasped for air and the nausea passed.

“Thank you,” I said after recovering. “Let’s finish.”

So, for me, there was considerable anxiety attached to the idea of a face mold. I knew what it was, of course. My father had spent hours in the makeup chair while filming The Frighteners, and his scrapbook captured every inch of the ordeal. I knew that in order to make a mold they’d have to put some kind of goop all over my face and stick straws up my nose so I could breathe. And if I didn’t calmly endure the discomfort, I’d be forced to go through it all over again. Even though I knew it was coming, I tried to put it out of my mind, but I couldn’t, for this time there would be no escape hatch. I had agreed to make the movie for less money than I needed to keep our new house, and by not putting everything into storage and renting out the place, I had painted myself into a corner, where at certain moments I’d experience anxiety that was totally unnecessary. For some reason, probably because I make everything more complicated than it needs to be, I had created a stressful environment, unintentionally torturing myself by trying to reconcile being a father, a husband, an actor, and a filmmaker. I knew that I had lucked into the role of a lifetime, that through my family and career and some quirk of my own talent, I had figured out how to get into this movie, and that was empowering to me. I couldn’t back down on needing the house, and I don’t know whether the anxiety was based on that dynamic or something else, because consciously I had no anxiety about going to New Zealand. That’s our lifestyle. People sometimes say to me, “I don’t know how you do that when you’ve got kids.” Well, you do it by not having that attitude. You say, “Fuck it! I’ll go where life and opportunity take me. I’ll be a global citizen.” That was my attitude and bravado, but beneath that swagger, on levels I barely understood, I was a wreck.

Upon hearing that I’d gotten the job in The Lord of the Rings, Eric Stoltz said, “My God, Sean, what a terrific break! You’ll live off that movie for five years.” It was a relief to hear something like that from Eric, a solid journeyman actor, a star, an artist who had always been good to me. Nevertheless, even his encouragement couldn’t completely quell the anxiety, which reached a peak on the morning I was supposed to have my face cast.

The appointment was for nine-thirty. I bolted out of bed at six, sweating, clutching my chest, quite sure that I was about to die. I reached over and grabbed Christine’s arm.

“Honey, I’m in trouble here.”

“Huh?” She was still half asleep.

“I think I’m having a heart attack.”

Christine took one look at me and became genuinely alarmed. “Okay, we’ll get you to the doctor.”

As she scrambled for the phone, I told her to wait. A few deep breaths later, the discomfort began to subside. My chest loosened, and my heart returned to its normal rhythm. After convincing Christine that I was all right, I took a shower, got dressed, and left the house. I hadn’t gone more than a mile or so when another wave of anxiety rolled in: shortness of breath, tingling in the arms, a crushing pain in my chest. I sat at a stop sign for a few moments, waiting for the attack to ebb once again. And it did. Now I wasn’t just scared; I was pissed! I couldn’t believe this was happening, and I was worried that it might cost me the job. I’m not a cancel-the-meeting kind of actor, so I knew I had to get through the makeup process and then visit a doctor. Which is precisely what I did.

A battery of diagnostic procedures, including an EKG and a treadmill test, revealed that I had the heart and lungs of a healthy twenty-eight-year-old man. The cardiologist was thoughtful and considerate, but he made it quite clear that I’d experienced nothing more serious than a panic attack. Both Christine and I were relieved, but when I called my mother to tell her what had happened, she burst into tears. My mother, of course, has had various health issues her whole life, including panic attacks, and the relating of my episode provoked considerable empathy and concern on her part. I think she considered my anxiety to be a red flag, an indication that I was susceptible to the same types of emotional and psychiatric disorders that had at various times made her life miserable. Mom has always believed that her children should be aware of the possibility that such illnesses could afflict them, and while I know there is an undeniable genetic component to bipolar disorder, I have never been quick to embrace it as an explanation for the dynamics or problems in my life.

Whenever something goes wrong, the slightest emotional slip, that’s my mother’s default. She’s inclined to say, “It’s a sign of manic depression, and you need to have it fixed.” My wife, whose family also has been burdened by mental illness, is more inclined to straddle the fence. She’s not so easily convinced, but has on occasion suggested that I should consider evaluation. The truth is, I do a million things at once; the pace of my life is unnaturally accelerated, and an unpleasant by-product of that frenetic pace is an occasional dip into sadness or exhaustion. So it doesn’t surprise me that my mother or my wife would feel a certain way, and I am open to the possibility. I’m not blind to it. But I don’t like the stigma, and so I often just deflect the concern with humor, patience, and genuine reflection, and then I move on.

God bless my mom. She wrote Call Me Anna, a best-selling book about her experiences with bipolar disorder, largely because she wanted to destigmatize the disease, and that was a noble cause for her to have embraced. But there are a lot of things I would like to accomplish in my life, including holding public office someday, and I don’t want to have to live with a diagnosis that will shape public opinion before I have the chance to achieve things that will give me the credibility to override that perception—especially when that diagnosis so often seems to be made with alarming speed and ease. A lot of people have anxiety attacks, a lot of people fret and worry. They aren’t all manic-depressive.

I’ve worked very hard to allay my mom’s fears, and my wife’s fears, while at the same time being honest with myself. Last summer my mother picked me up at the airport in Spokane, Washington, and while we drove to her house she told me that the Arts & Entertainment network wanted her to be the subject of a lifetime retrospective. I was skeptical; sometimes Mom makes decisions that I deem too self-serving. I don’t deny that her book helped a lot of people. I’ve seen it myself. Hundreds of people have come up to me, crying, saying how much the sharing of her experiences helped them. I know her story resonates on deep levels, but I also know that my mother needed money, and I know how adversely her book affected my father and my brothers and our family. So I wanted to be loyal to my mother and supportive of her, and let her tell whatever stories she wanted about me, but I had mixed feelings. My mother’s book represented her statement about who she was, and in making that statement she was completely willing to give herself over to the psychiatric community—to her detriment in some ways, in my opinion. I think she largely abdicated certain kinds of personal responsibility, which exacerbated a lot of problems. I’m through the looking glass with my mother on this. I love her and I’m very forgiving of her, but I also don’t want to repeat her mistakes. I recognize that there is an ambient perception out there, that as the somewhat hyperkinetic son of a famously bipolar Oscar-winning actress, I am the target of certain presumptions. That’s okay. It comes with the territory.

Whether I’d be able to manage my anxiety while having my face encased in plaster, like the Man in the Iron Mask, was a legitimate question, and one I hadn’t satisfactorily answered when I arrived at KNB EFX Group in the San Fernando Valley. Like Peter Owen, the folks at KNB are among the best in the business at what they do. Formed in 1988 by Robert Kurtzman, Howard Berger, and Greg Nicotero while the trio was working on Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn, KNB had earned a reputation for greatness among filmmakers with a taste for lavish and sometimes gruesome special makeup effects. Among the films on the company’s resume were Men in Black, Scream, Pulp Fiction, and Mars Attacks. And now they were doing advance work on The Lord of the Rings.

More than anything else, I felt inspired when I walked into the studio. It was like another rite of passage. My father had been through this. So had countless other actors. It was a process bathed in trust: you had to put your faith in somebody else—completely. To that end I was offered a tour of the facility designed to set my mind at ease by making the work less mystical and frightening. I was told that a particularly attractive actress had been in just a short time earlier, and that the boys at KNB had to prove their professionalism in making a full-body cast for her. They showed me masks and molds that had been designed for other actors. And then it was my turn; inspiration turned to fear.

“You ready?” Howard asked.

My mouth was dry, so I just nodded.

“Okay, have a seat.”

I tried to project confidence, but inside I was dying. While giving me the tour, Howard had related the story of another actor, an action star, who had completely flipped out in the middle of the molding process. He’d started sweating and yelling, and then jumped up and ripped everything off. I laughed at the story and made some joke about how pathetic it was that anyone could let that happen, but at the same time I was thinking, You know what? That’s going to be me in about ten minutes. Then they told me that Elijah had been in the day before.

“Yeah? How did he do?”

“Oh, he was great, man. Such a professional.”

That little shit!

I knew then that there was no way out. If Elijah could weather the process without complaint or incident, then I could, too.

As they stirred the mixture that was to be applied to my face, I asked a question.

“What happens if I have trouble breathing after it hardens? You do a little tracheotomy or something?”

Howard laughed. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”

They kept talking, making jokes, trying to put me at ease. Really, though, I wasn’t in the mood for conversation. I tried to be cordial, but what I wanted to do was just close my eyes and get through it. I’d seen makeup effects for a lot of movies, and I’d always wondered how I’d react when it was my turn. Here was the answer: not well.

“Some people tell me it’s quite a soothing experience,” Howard said, scooping a handful of glop from a bucket.

Splat!

He smeared a patch over my cheeks and forehead. I tensed, and I think he noticed. I’m sure he noticed. “Just breathe. That’s it. Nice and easy.”

I’d had two panic attacks already, and a third was imminent. Or so it seemed. Then a funny thing happened. The nervousness went away. The more of my face they covered, the more soothing it became, and I realized then that I’d live through it. There was a moment when they were working close to my nose, and I was concerned that my nostrils would get plugged with plaster and I’d choke to death, but that passed quickly. The truth is, they were extraordinarily good at their jobs, and I trusted them. Eventually, as they covered my ears and eyes, everything went dark, and a weird feeling of sensory deprivation took over. Three minutes passed. Four minutes. Five …

“We’re waiting for it to harden,” Howard explained. “Sit tight. It’s almost over.”

Someone tapped the shell, and it occurred to me then that I had no idea how they were going to remove the mold. Was it like a cast? Would they use a little circular saw on the top of my head? Around my neck? Didn’t like the idea of that at all. I hadn’t asked enough questions; I had trusted in the notion that if they killed me it would ruin their reputation and upset the studio, and no one wanted that to happen. Still, when I heard Howard say, “It’s ready,” I felt another small surge of panic. I held my breath in anticipation of the whine of a saw, the sting of a razor, but neither came. Instead, someone reached under my chin and tugged gently on the mold, and I felt my skin pull away from it. The thing had enough elasticity that it could be removed like a ski mask. Just like that, I was in the open air again, breathing freely.

Howard held up the mask and explained how they would use it to create an image of my face, and then make innumerable latex molds from that image.

“You did great,” he said.

“Thanks,” I replied, feigning nonchalance. “You were right. No big deal.”

*   *   *

The molds for the hobbit feet, those giant furry slippers that would be individually applied in a tedious process each morning in New Zealand, were done later, and that was a ball. There’s nothing panic-inducing about having your feet molded. In fact, it was while having those molds taken that it first dawned on me that feet were an issue. Even though I had read 160 pages of The Lord of the Rings, there was much I simply didn’t understand. I just didn’t get it: Hobbits have big feet. So what? I’m such a pug sometimes. I’m so pugnacious, and I don’t mean that in the flattering sense of the word. I’m so busy thinking about things and approaching them in a way that gets me where I want to go, that sometimes I just miss the point—you know, I can’t see the forest for the trees. I don’t always get what’s fun or funny or cool or interesting, usually because I’m too busy looking at things from my vantage point, through selfishness, really. In some ways I’ve been a victim of needing some type of ownership to other’s people work in order to really appreciate it. I go to fantasy and science-fiction conventions now, and I see how people spend hours building miniatures. There was a time when I couldn’t appreciate that. Oh, sure, I respected their right to play games and build models and be geeky—there are billions of people on this planet and everyone has their own interests—but somehow, as much as I tried to be a student of the business and an heir to a tradition of Hollywood success, I still just didn’t get it.

Not until The Lord of the Rings did I comprehend the depth of people’s work and passion. I’m embarrassed and disappointed in myself for not getting there sooner, for not really appreciating the genius of a man like Peter Owen, and the conversations he must have had with Peter Jackson. What foresight and drive they must have had, what intelligence and sheer artistry! Sure, I admired that Peter found this franchise and devised a way to bring it to the screen, but I didn’t appreciate or understand its roots. The success of The Lord of the Rings is in a very real sense born out of Peter Jackson’s love for making models as a kid. Peter and all these other people who brought the films to life, with their genuine passion and love of interfacing with stuff on their own terms. I’d always sort of understood it, but now I was getting it on a big scale. Doing a movie like Rudy, the skill set was different. I’ve always known how to memorize my lines and hit my mark, how to muster the right kind of emotion for the right kind of scene, and how to be comfortable with the director and the other actors. But this realm—fantasy—I never had a lot of respect for it. It always seemed hokey to me. Now, though, I realized I was embarking on something where the mission was to make it not hokey.

One of the great things about working on The Goonies was that Dick Donner and Steven Spielberg made both the set and the experience so real. It was a fantasy, with pirates and treasure, but it didn’t feel like a fantasy. It felt like an adventure. Dick and Steven were incredible engines, with different strengths. There was a time when I thought Dick didn’t get it, that he didn’t understand the real poetry and mystery of the story. In retrospect, of course, I know I was wrong. He did get it. It’s just that he was something of a drill sergeant: “Get over here, kid! Hit your mark! Say your line! Now get out of the way.” He was a bombastic leader on the set, and I didn’t realize that the bravado masked his true sense of the magical. Steven was different. The tenor and the ambience when he was directing scenes (and they really were like codirectors) was much gentler, more whimsical. They’re both extraordinary directors, of course, but as a kid I presumed that Steven had a more natural appreciation for the spirit of adventure. I’m not so sure that’s accurate. As a wrap gift, Dick presented me with a leather-bound collection of books, adventure classics by Herman Melville, John Steinbeck, Arthur Conan Doyle, Isaac Asimov, and others. He knew.

Unfortunately, it’s part of my personality to miss things on the first pass, so when I started reading The Lord of the Rings, I barely noticed the hobbits’ feet. There’s an excuse for that, I suppose: feet aren’t a big issue in The Lord of the Rings, having been explained and detailed rather thoroughly in The Hobbit. But I hadn’t read that, either. When they started applying the feet prosthetics, however, it sort of dawned on me: Hey! Feet are of special significance to hobbits! Sounds ridiculous, but that’s the way it was. Something about placing my feet in a gelatinous goop caused an awakening, and I thought, I’ll bet Peter and Fran realize how special the feet are, and I’ll bet Tolkien gave it an immense amount of consideration. That was the first moment when I appreciated the tenderness and the sense of humor and the twinkle in the eye of the author. (By the way, when I arrived in New Zealand, I found it immensely amusing that some folks seemed to have little use for shoes, including Peter, who routinely showed up on the set barefoot and bedraggled, much like a hobbit.)

My ignorance of such things, things that are so familiar to fans and devoted readers of Tolkien, might seem incomprehensible, even offensive, but I had only my particular vantage point. I was looking at the role as an actor for hire, so in the beginning at least, I didn’t immerse myself in research. That’s not meant to be an excuse, merely an explanation. I can recall my stepmother, Val, who had been corresponding with Fran and Peter off and on for years, sending me pictures of the hobbits and of Gandalf via e-mail. She understood the importance of feet in Tolkien’s world. And I’m sure my father did, too.

You see, John Astin actually auditioned for a major role in The Lord of the Rings. While I was fighting for the part of Sam, he was asked to audition for the role of Gandalf. Ian McKellen now owns the role, of course, and it will forever be hard to imagine anyone else in his place. But my father was in contention for that part, and I wanted in the worst way for him to get it. There had been talk of Sean Connery playing Gandalf, and Ian, of course, was involved in the process from the very beginning. Those two actors are heavyweights, and while on the surface it might seem that any sensible director would prefer either of them to John Astin, that isn’t necessarily the case. My father is a classically trained Shakespearean actor. Yes, he’s most famous for starring in The Addams Family and Night Court, for doing the Killer Tomato movies, for being this goofy goober of a guy. And he’s good at that sort of thing. But he’s a serious man who has given extraordinary and powerful performances. Ultimately, I think I was probably more innately right for Sam than my dad was for Gandalf, although I’ve totally muted this thought in my interactions with him.

My dad was ambivalent at the time because he was gearing up for his one-man show about Edgar Allen Poe. He is also always fielding offers for TV shows, theater parts, and films. But he knows Peter and Fran, and he respects them immensely. To that end, he was more than willing to prepare an audition for them. I’m a little fuzzy on what took place in the actual room, but according to my dad, Peter gave him a note that represented a real challenging adjustment given the research he’d done and his first take on the character. Peter once said to me that my father was great in the audition. Dad told me that he considered shooting a videotape of himself as Gandalf once he was able to reconcile what he knew of the character with what Peter had wanted. If memory serves, time was short and there was a lot going on. I think it’s fair to say that my dad didn’t want to complicate matters for me with Peter, because he knew how much I wanted the part and what it would mean for my career. I think he also knew better than I did just how all-consuming an endeavor it would be, and he was reluctant to give up all that he’d been working on. The point of the story is simply this: it is possible for thoughtful, talented people to work and thrive in a complex emotional or “political” environment.

I felt a little awkward when my dad came to my house to congratulate me and celebrate, because I wasn’t sure if he was more disappointed than he was letting on. To be sure, he was extraordinarily proud of me, happy for me, and excited for the adventure we were certain to have. If I sensed a little hint of disappointment, perhaps I was projecting my own guilt at having gotten a golden part in a charmed project when he had not. It may seem like a confusing contradiction, but I can also say that I sensed a little relief in him that he didn’t get the part. Did Dad know something I didn’t know? Something about how grueling an experience it was going to be? Seriously though, I never would have gotten the chance to play Sam if it wasn’t for my father—and for the contributions of a lot of other people. But if I had to pick the single most influential person outside of the project, the individual most responsible for my being prepared and capable of doing the job, it would have to be my father.

Dad has spent the better part of the last decade steeped in the richness of an extraordinarily artistic life. He has returned to his roots at Johns Hopkins and the city of Baltimore, where he spent much time in his youth. Now he is a guest lecturer at that hallowed institution. He has a condo near the campus (bicoastal, you know), and he thrives on the energy of his students. He travels with his one-man show, Once Upon a Midnight: An Evening with Edgar Allen Poe, and performs in many other plays. I think he is deservedly enjoying one of the most fulfilling and exciting chapters in his life. I’m not sure all of that would have been true if Peter had offered him the part of Gandalf, and he had spent the better part of five years focused on The Lord of the Rings. Regardless, I will be forever grateful to him for all that he has done for me and given me, and what is more, I’m probably more proud of him than he could ever be of me.

If you, the reader, learn anything about me in this book, I’ll be happy. But I’m sure that my father would prefer that I spend my time developing myself as an actor and not pouring through the subtleties of deal making, money issues, and the mechanics of building a career for the sake of a book. He is a purist when it comes to craft, and in that respect he is wiser than I ever will be. He is my inspiration and my conscience; in a sense, he is my own personal Gandalf.