CHAPTER NINE

All right, I admit it. I took a shortcut. Tried to, anyway.

Before we moved into the rented house in New Zealand that would serve as our home for the better part of a year and a half, Christine and Ali and I stayed at the Plaza International Hotel, in a nice suite with a lovely view of Wellington harbor. One evening, just a few days into our trip, I filled the bathtub and settled in for a long night of reading.

Listening, actually.

While Alan Lee’s three-volume tome sat unopened on a nightstand nearby, I tried to absorb an audio version of The Lord of the Rings that had been recorded for the BBC. It featured, among others, Ian Holm, the esteemed British actor who, of course, played Bilbo Baggins in the film trilogy. I settled at first for listening to the story because I was afraid people would ask me questions that I’d be unable to answer, and this would allow me to complete it more quickly.

Even after reading the scripts, I still didn’t have a firm grasp of the story. I understood my dialogue and what the story was supposed to represent, but I wasn’t emotionally invested in the nuts and bolts of the screenplay, partly because I felt guilty about not having read the books. Quite a conundrum, huh?

Granted, the solution was obvious: sit down and read the damn books! As had often been the case when I was a child, though, I found the task intimidating. More than a thousand pages, hours of time, when I didn’t really have the time to spare. And I must admit that in those early days and weeks I found it difficult to toggle back and forth between what I wanted to do and what I had to do—between my responsibility as a professional actor, someone who wanted to be thoroughly prepared, and my desire to have fun with my family in an exotic locale. No one was telling me what to do. I don’t think I had to read the Tolkien tales in order to do my job (in fact I know that some people, most notably my partner in crime, Elijah, never read the books in their entirety), but there were expectations. Peter knew from the way I presented myself in our meetings that I would be totally committed to the project, which meant studying hard and being prepared. I had if not a professional obligation, at least a moral mandate to take up residence in Tolkien’s universe.

Eventually, within the first few weeks of principal photography, I would complete the entire trilogy, as well as The Hobbit, which served as a neat introduction and made the task of reading The Lord of the Rings not only easier, but more worthwhile. This wasn’t exactly a unique experience, since several million people had come before me, but once I picked up The Hobbit, I found the books to be enthralling, enrapturing, like nothing else I’d ever experienced. I finally enjoyed them as a reader; as an actor assigned the task of interpreting one of the story’s key characters, I felt enlightened, emboldened.

Before that moment of illumination, though, came the shortcut—and the doubt and anxiety and, yes, the abject fear. Not so much from the audio version, which was enjoyable and elegantly performed and permitted a degree of effortless absorption that mirrored those early “reading” sessions with my mother. No, the panic set in when I made the mistake of watching a videotape of Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings. Seeing how Bakshi portrayed the hobbits—as predominantly fat, bumbling, stupid characters—I nearly had a heart attack.

Please, God, don’t let Peter Jackson approach it this way.

I should have had more faith, but it was too early in the process. I wasn’t sure what Peter had in mind, and I knew that Bakshi was far from a hack. He had his devotees, and I’m sure he knew the story and felt that his was an entirely appropriate interpretation. Moreover, the animated version had its moments. The ringwraiths, for example, were spectacularly depicted. I could appreciate what Bakshi was trying to do as a director and an animator and a storyteller, but I was concerned mainly with Sam and how he would be portrayed. Not having read much of the books, I couldn’t help but feel that I might have made a critical mistake in agreeing to play the part; I had no respect for the bumbling idiot that Samwise Gamgee appeared to be—at least in the eyes of Ralph Bakshi. At that point I didn’t understand the importance of the hobbits and what they meant to the story. I didn’t have a grasp on their sense of nobility. They just seemed like frightened nitwits: “Oh, Mr. Frodo, help me! I don’t know what to do!” Pleeeeeease! I wanted Sam to be heroic and strong, to have integrity. He was a gardener, a working-class man. That’s the Sam I wanted to portray. Admittedly, there are a lot of interpretations that can be gleaned when you read the books, so bringing it to the screen is not an easy thing. There are probably thirty valid ways to depict the hobbits. But I had my own idea of how I wanted Sam to be perceived, and it was set in concrete. What I had in mind wasn’t that … that thing, that animated oaf on the videotape.

At times during the production I felt isolated and rigid in my beliefs about how the hobbits should be depicted. Even the other actors were more willing to embrace the silly or whimsical side of their characters. Dom, for example, enjoyed being a bit more hokey, playing up the notion of hobbits as little people, almost like leprechauns, or at the least, childlike. I resisted. By putting on oversized feet it would be easy for clumsiness to rule the day, but I wanted the character’s gait to be comfortable. I wanted it to be honest and real. I was pleased the first time I stepped into the complete hobbit ensemble, replete with backpack, and Sam’s walk emerged naturally.

That I wasn’t alone in striving for authenticity was something I found immensely reassuring. In fact, that goal, while perhaps open to interpretation, was paramount in the minds of everyone on the production. The nature of our six-week “boot camp” prior to the start of principal photography was such that it left us all with a feeling of excitement and preparedness. We’d receive marching orders each evening, detailing how every moment of the following day would be filled. From seven in the morning until six at night our bodies were required to be in specific places, for specific tasks.

Dialect training was particularly intense, at least for me. I’d meet in the Portacom with Andrew Jack and Roisin Carty, the dialect coaches, and we’d make small talk just to loosen up, and then I’d get a lesson about how sounds are made. You don’t think about it much in everyday conversation, but there are specific ways to use the tongue and the teeth in order to achieve certain sounds. They’d give me booklets to read, audiotapes to review, and my job was to practice speech patterns. There was a laundry list of things that needed to be done in order to get the dialect just right. The cockney accent I had employed during the audition was deemed inappropriate for Sam; they wanted me to do a “Hobbiton,” which they saw as a Gloucestershire-inspired accent.

It was hard for me to get it right. I could do the thing that Elijah was doing as Frodo, a standard British accent: “No problem for me what-so-evah.” I’d done that a hundred times. But to push it into West Country … well, that was harder. It’s very hard to do “thaaaaat.” Andy and Ro kept trying to get me to elongate the sounds, and I struggled mightily to do so. It felt like emotional warfare, even though I was completely inspired by and respectful of their expertise. I didn’t really know who Sam was, so I wanted to give myself totally to them. At the same time, I wanted to feel good about what I was doing.

“Come on, Sean, extend the word that,” the dialect coach would instruct. Say ‘Thaaaaat.”’

“Thaaaaat.”

“No … Stretch it out. Thaaaaaaaaat.”

“Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.”

“Again! Thaaaaaaaaaaat.”

“Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.”

“Good!”

I feel like an idiot.

For a while it seemed that Andy and Ro were a little nervous, concerned that I wasn’t ever going to nail the dialect. And I’m not sure that I did nail it, but I tried, and I think the results are good enough.

The production team did a thorough job of filling our days with valuable instruction, so it was up to us to manage our own energy level, and to muster the requisite strength and courage and acumen. We had access to a personal trainer, Dave Nuku, for an hour and a half each day. There was, depending on the species you were playing, horseback training, archery training, canoe training, and sword training. It seemed as though whenever there was a free moment, we were sent back for more sword training. I think our endurance was being tested as much as anything else. We had to be battle-hardened, and we all accepted it.

We also accepted the idea that we were down there and we belonged to the studio. I got the distinct impression that if I wanted to do something with my wife and my child, I was expected to work it out on my own time. That didn’t bother me, not in the beginning anyway, simply because I was so excited. I thought, This must have been what it was like for Errol Flynn, or Jimmy Stewart, or any of the legendary stars in Hollywood who worked under the studio contract system and whose every move was dictated. There’s an aspect to that kind of control that’s creepy, yes, but there’s also something weirdly reassuring about it. I mean, I had dancing lessons during boot camp! This was to prepare me for a brief scene (trimmed to be even briefer) in which Sam dances with his future wife, Rosie Cotton.

Such devotion, such support, was exhilarating. It was an actor’s dream. I felt at times like I was at the peak of my career, that nothing could ever hold a candle to what I was experiencing on The Lord of the Rings. I liked that these people understood everything about making a great movie, including the notion that an actor’s body had to go through certain motions in preproduction so that he’d be ready to perform at a high level. Simply waking up in the morning and going to work felt good, like I was involved in something important. Something hard, yes, but also something that had the potential to be extraordinary. There was just one problem: I was getting fat. The weight lifting, combined with a diet that consisted of whatever the hell I wanted to toss down my gullet, left me feeling thick across the back and shoulders, and ample in the belly. Not an inappropriate state for Samwise Gamgee, I suppose, and I know Peter approved, but I found the transformation to be exhausting and depressing.

There was, as you might expect, considerable bonding between cast members. The Lord of the Rings was a male-dominated production, and the atmosphere often mirrored that of a football team’s locker room. Conversation routinely was reduced to the most vile and base sort of talk—male bonding taken to its most ludicrous extreme. I remember thinking, I hope the driver has a confidentiality agreement, because if anybody were to hear what we’re talking about in this van right now, no one would ever respect us again. It’s appalling. If my wife could hear me, I would be in grave danger of never being able to even hold her hand again. We were all equally responsible for our sophomoric behavior, for telling raunchy jokes and heaving filthy insults at each other. Billy and Dom were particularly effective at this little game—not as good as I was, but close. Of course, their strength was impeccable comic timing. But we all played a part.

As I look back on it now, I realize that the point of preproduction training was not simply to get us ready for the hard work ahead, but to toss us all—hobbits, dwarves, elves, wizards, and men—into a cauldron and see what bubbled to the surface. With any luck we’d forge friendships and alliances, and the strength of those friendships would be reflected on screen. Elijah led the way. “We’re going to be friends forever!” he’d say. Inside, I was more jaded. I was older and had been on numerous movie sets where I had felt similarly enthusiastic about my fellow actors. Inevitably, though, over time we drifted apart.

I wanted to believe Elijah was right, but he was young, and I thought he hadn’t been around quite as much, so I had my doubts. However, at this writing, in the spring of 2004, I can honestly say that we do remain friends. But it’s been easy so far. Looping and various postproduction obligations, as well as the seemingly endless publicity tour that has accompanied the trilogy, have made it easy, even necessary, to get together. We shall see what time holds. I hope the truth is closer to what Elijah believes than what my experience tells me is likely to happen, because we really did go through something special. The actors on The Lord of the Rings were closer than on any other movie I’ve ever been on—probably closer than on all the other movies combined.

Before the start of principal photography, Ian McKellen and I found ourselves at Peter Jackson’s house viewing The Lord of the Rings in animatic form. An animatic is basically a crude animated version of a film, almost like storyboards set to music. It’s a relatively cheap but effective way of presenting the complete story in visual form.

Arriving at Peter’s home was like arriving at the modest castle of a king, or at least one of the noble lords of the manor. I had been to Steven Spielberg’s house; I’d been to Richard Donner’s house. I’d seen a lot of different mansions. I’d toured throughout Europe and visited ancient castles, and in my estimation Peter was the kind of feudal lord or captain of industry who would live in a way reflective of that spirit. Well before The Lord of the Rings phenomenon, I’d read a news story about him being one of the richest people in New Zealand, and when you meet people like that, you can’t help but gauge how they wear their wealth, or whether they’re worthy of their riches. I remember feeling as if Peter and Fran were like the king and queen of New Zealand. They were connected, and it reinforced my idea of them being masters of their domain. Peter is accurately depicted as a favorite son of New Zealand, someone who has pioneered an industry and given work to thousands of people—tens of thousands by extension, when you consider the money pumped into this film. He’s a part owner of the movie theater in Wellington, and part owner of a film laboratory and special-effects company. He is a man who has had, and continues to have, a huge impact on the development of his country.

But the house …

The first time I saw it, I was struck by how little it resembled the house of a king. It was beautiful and sprawling and all of that, and the view toward the harbor was breathtaking. But it wasn’t a mansion in the traditional sense of the word; it wasn’t a monument to the ego of its owner. It was, well, comfortable. It felt like a home, rather than a museum, which I found extraordinarily appealing and impressive. I liked the idea that Peter and Fran weren’t obsessed with their house; instead, they were more interested in work and family. Part brick, part wood, three stories high, it was an appealing, funky house that looked like a lot of older New Zealand homes. A very warm, unpretentious kind of residence. It didn’t draw attention to itself. Yes, there was a playful coat of arms, but it wasn’t like Bruce Wayne’s house, where the coat of arms is standing there, and you feel like, Ooooh, it’s marble, maybe I should salute. The house was lived in; even the couches were worn from having welcomed so many friends. The one thing that did concern me was accessibility. Peter and Fran were so reluctant to relinquish their normalcy and their comfort with people that they sometimes failed to understand the magnitude of their own celebrity. I once told them they needed a security buffer, and Peter looked at me rather disdainfully, like he was annoyed that I didn’t understand New Zealand culture, that kind of Kiwi spirit, and that I was an elitist Hollywood guy. But I had a few glasses of wine in me, and I didn’t mind telling him what I thought.

“You’ve got kids; you need to be careful. You shouldn’t worry about preserving an image of being cool and down to earth.”

Peter dismissed me with a wave and a chuckle, but a few months later, when media and fan attention became oppressive, they made sensible adjustments to their entranceway.

This particular night was my first opportunity to spend a fair amount of time with Ian McKellen. When I had first arrived in New Zealand, the role of Gandalf had not yet been cast. Or, if it had, the news hadn’t been leaked to the media. Gossip and innuendo had been circulating for some time that Sean Connery was going to be offered the part. I had asked Peter about this a couple days into my stay, and he merely raised an eyebrow and feigned disinterest, like someone enjoying the fact that the rumor mill had gotten going. Peter understands the value of such things; he knows that when the fan base is vibrating with that kind of noise and energy, when there’s so much genuine interest—when Tolkien purists debate the merits of a given actor and question the director’s wisdom—it’s beneficial to the production, provided it’s managed correctly. Sean Connery is a hero of mine; nevertheless, I thought he would have been distracting in the part, and I wanted to share with Peter my take on that. But he didn’t bite.

Peter once said that New Line had told him to make an offer to Sean, and another time he said no such offer had ever been made, so I really don’t know where the truth lies. I did find the process fascinating. It seemed that in the upper echelon of the business, it was all about saving face: Did someone make an offer? Did a brilliant and famous artist extend himself across the world? Did Sean Connery say, “This is something I would like to consider?” Obviously, Peter Jackson, when building a project of this magnitude, wanted to both capture and trade on the success of other people. Certainly, he wanted to include the core talents of incredibly gifted artists, while managing their egos and dealing with the ancillary business dynamic that is attendant with hiring world-class artists. Given all of that, did Peter reach out to Sean?

In other words, what the hell happened? How do you get sophisticated enough to do it? Do you fall in love with somebody’s talent and say, God, he’s so right for my project that I’ll put up with any amount of shit to have him here? Or do you say, I recognize that this person is a legend in his field, and he would bring a certain level of energy and distinction and credibility, but is he right? Is he really right?

A fair question. My father has such a nobility of purpose and philosophically realized attitude about human nature that I think he might have tried to impose that on his Gandalf. Sean Connery has a kind of rugged persona that has been honed and magnified over decades. Everybody knows Sean Connery and what his thing is. I wondered whether anyone would be able to see past that, past the fact that he was Sean Connery. Would the audience accept and believe him as Gandalf?

The only reason I mention this is that I’d like people to know that actors, like fans, are susceptible to curiosity and intrigue. I think there’s a perception that once you’re on the inside of the project, you get to know everything, but that’s just not true. I suppose if any of us really wanted to know something on The Lord of the Rings, all we had to do was ask, but that’s not the way it worked a lot of the time. The movies were a huge operation with many people, many egos, and a lot at stake for everyone involved. Some of us were on a need-to-know basis, and some of us had better or quicker access to information than others. Elijah was funny about this stuff; he always seemed to know everything that was going on a nanosecond before everyone else. I was generally a few beats behind everyone. We were deluged with such a mountain of paperwork, a seemingly endless stream of constantly updated information about locations, call times, crew lists, schedules, traveling itineraries, script pages, invitations to various events, publicity stuff, and so on. The data stream was like Muzak to me. I was focused more on the practical implications of what I was doing or would be required to do on a given day.

Unlike most productions, this project could nimbly adjust everything to accommodate for radically changing conditions in weather, set construction, or a myriad of other scheduling exigencies that might arise. Since I saw myself as a low man on the totem pole (at least in terms of having an impact on the schedule), I resisted staying too up to date with production logistics. I probably would have enjoyed myself more if I had treated the dynamics of the shooting schedule like a parlor game and played at getting inside the heads of the producers. But I experienced something on The Lord of the Rings that I’m not proud of. To anyone who happened by, it was obvious that the people in charge of the movie were engaged in something unique. I had so little decision-making ability on anything relating to the bigger picture of the films that I was, in a word, jealous. I envied the hell out of Barrie and Peter, the two most visible decision makers around. They got to make decisions every day that affected the movements and fortunes of dozens if not hundreds of people. They were focused on the business and creativity of the pictures, but in a larger human sense they were exerting a kind of power over others; in a very un-Sam-like manner, I wanted to share in that. But it was not to be. For obvious and more subtle reasons, I endured a kind of torture, watching people doing the very thing I had dreamt about my whole life—and doing it better than I probably ever would.

Peter and Elijah and virtually everyone who knew me well could sense that I had a hard time bottling my enthusiasm and desire to, if not be in charge, at least have a say. Again, I’m not proud of this, and even while we were shooting, I knew how inappropriate my feelings were. But it was such a long time commitment that I couldn’t just tell myself, Hang in there; soon enough you’ll be able to get back to the business of trying to accomplish a modicum of what these geniuses are doing.

I got to watch and learn and be patient and suffer. I read dozens of books on filmmaking, even while sitting off to the side of the set waiting to be called in. I wanted Peter to see me reading, giving myself the kind of education that he clearly gave himself as a devotee of cinema. But his learning was purer than mine. He genuinely loves everything about movies. While I do, too, I’m trying to share a different driving force in my personality. I wanted to understand how the power I could behold in Peter and Barrie and the studio heads was born and nurtured and built. I wanted to earn Peter’s respect and admiration as a contemporary and as a thinker. It was so stupid—all I really needed to do was focus on my acting, and everything else would naturally have flowed from that, the way Elijah or Andy Serkis or Billy Boyd did. But I couldn’t. I had too much of a certain kind of experience as an actor. The very reason it was good for the production that I played the part of Sam—namely, that I didn’t need too many technical things explained to me—was the root of a lot of discontent for me. Peter and others didn’t have to get me comfortable with the language of filmmaking the way they might have if they hired a less experienced person to play the part. I knew pretty readily what I needed to do for Sam, and it didn’t take up too much of my time to be ready. I didn’t have too much control over the direction of my character, in the sense that it was clear that the right thing to do was just be ready to give Peter whatever he might want for the part. But I couldn’t help it. Ambition burned in my belly, and professionalism and courtesy and survival compelled me to swallow my silly pride and twitch with the knowledge that, Man, if only I could be let loose in this arena, I could accomplish extraordinary things! I would watch as thousands of extras assembled, or listened as people communicated somewhat inefficiently, because the protocol mandated waiting for access to Peter before moving ahead. Suffice it to say that for me this kind of patience is nearly unbearable.

But getting back to my first night at Peter’s house …

The question about who was “right” for Gandalf was irrelevant. Ian McKellen had arrived in Wellington. He was Gandalf, and that was that. On this night and afterward, envy and insecurity often permeated my interactions with Ian. I found him at once inspiring and intimidating. I wondered why I wasn’t smart enough to know what he knows, like how to create a character: deciding on the size and shape of the nose, the length of the hair, the beard, the ears, and turning to Alan Lee’s illustrations not just for enjoyment but for guidance and meaning and inspiration. Everything about Ian and the way he approached his craft was so thoughtful and evolved and considered that it was obvious why he’s the caliber of actor that he is. And I was in awe of him.

That said, there was also a part of me that sensed some artifice in Ian’s approach to acting. I wanted to arrive at the creation of my character in a more organic, honest, ground-up way, rather than from the brain down. It would be hard to argue that my approach makes more sense than Ian’s, given the caliber of his work and the plaudits that have been heaped on him over the course of a long and distinguished career. And, yes, I know it may seem insulting for me to compare my style with his. But I want to share the way that I felt. Certainly I know, deep in my bones, that Ian has probably forgotten more about acting than I’ll ever know.

But there we were, watching the animatic together, with Peter sitting right behind us. This, for me, was an important experience. I had always wanted to be in that environment, where you’re at the house of the filmmaker, getting into his head, having conversations at a place close enough to the source of the Nile that you might affect how the river will be shaped at the other end; where there is the real possibility of having a substantive impact on your character or even the film itself. Acting is more fun when you feel like your ideas matter. You feel valuable, and you have a greater investment in what you’re doing. So to be in Peter Jackson’s house, just a couple of weeks before shooting was scheduled to begin, sharing dinner and conversation with Ian McKellen, well, that was like Christmas coming early for me.

Sort of.

I had seen and admired Ian in several films, most notably Gods and Monsters. By anyone even remotely knowledgeable about movies, he was considered a very important actor. So I studied him that night. I tried not to be too obvious about it, but that’s what I was doing. At the same time, I was trying to act like I belonged in the room, reminding myself that I had talent, too; that I was right for the part; and that while I could learn from somebody who was a little bit older, somebody who had succeeded so completely in his craft, I wasn’t exactly chopped liver. I wanted to absorb the conversations around me while communicating ideas of my own, but I knew I was swimming in deep creative and intellectual waters.

Much of the conversation centered on the animatic. I found it hard to concentrate on the actual story because I was so intrigued and inspired by the thought and technology behind it. To help shape the movie experience for his actors, the studio, and the crew, Peter had gone to the trouble of spotting the soundtrack or choosing musical accompaniment from Braveheart and other movies. I know what it takes to put together coherent storyboards, and the animatic was essentially storyboards set in motion. So much energy had been expended, so much time. The way it was photographed, the way the camera panned across the images—I was as intrigued as much by that as by the story.

Not that the animatic wasn’t a valuable tool. It was, for it helped illuminate and clarify certain things in terms of rhythm and pacing, and pivotal moments. I had finished The Fellowship of the Ring by this point, and I had read the beginning four or five times. And yet I remained confused. That whole bit about Three rings and the Elvin kings under the sky. I didn’t really get. I got it on a poetic level, that it set the tone in terms of language and style, but as far as the story, I just couldn’t comprehend it. Why were there this many rings or that many rings? The animatic, however, contained the prologue that was more or less used in the movie, and seeing that helped me understand the books. To his credit, Peter had allowed for the fact that some people hadn’t read the books, and for that I was grateful. As a serious, interested, and invested party who had engaged the books and failed to grasp their meaning, I felt frustrated. Peter’s sense of composition and story, combined with the work of the artists, helped me see the story. That, in turn, made me more excited about reading the books. I was determined to have finished the full trilogy before we started principal photography. I missed my deadline by a couple of weeks, but I did finally complete the books, which is a good thing, because I’m sure my performance would have suffered if I hadn’t. Moreover, I would have felt like an idiot and a slacker.

There was one thing about the animatic that I found frankly terrifying: the realization that in assembling the presentation, Peter and Fran had clearly allowed other actors to read the screenplay. After all, someone had to read the lines, right? So there was someone playing Frodo, someone else playing Aragorn, someone playing Bilbo and Merry and Pippin and Legolas—and someone playing Sam. My role! More than anything else, this stirred within me a feeling of competitiveness, as if I were getting ready to play a baseball game. Granted, I already had the part, and it was perfectly reasonable and even kind of cool that Peter had such a community of friends in drama that he could just pull them together and do the equivalent of a table reading. But there was something else. The way the actor read the lines for Sam in the animatic, the way the character was portrayed in the Ralph Bakshi cartoon and the BBC audio version—all three were similarly deficient in portraying Sam as the heroic character I wanted him to be. Not one of them lived up to my expectations. The feeling that maybe the book lent itself to a particular type of reading concerned me because I had committed a year and a half to the project. If it turned out to be just a show for kids or for fans of the genre, and not something that I would want to see, then that just wouldn’t be acceptable to me. I had faith in Peter and the process, but something happened in my skin when I was sitting there watching the animatic. Afterward, I tried to demonstrate for my boss that I was respectful and had the requisite amount of inspiration. At the same time, I didn’t want to fake it.

Ian, as far as I could tell, experienced no such inner turmoil. On the drive back to the hotel afterward, he said, “Isn’t it great to be working for a couple of hippies who have the business so wired?” That was it! He’d put his finger right on it. There is such a quality of whimsy and ease and confidence surrounding Peter and Fran. This movie, this trilogy, was going to consume their lives—it already had consumed their lives—and yet on some level they didn’t take it too seriously. It was, after all, just a movie.

Yeah, the biggest movie in history …

Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, Peter would display a preternatural grace. I became exasperated at times, just as almost everyone did. But I never saw Peter panic. I never even saw him get angry. Not really. I’ve since come to the conclusion that his is a rare type of confidence, the kind that can only be possessed by someone who knows exactly what he’s doing, and how it’s going to turn out.

I think Ian figured that out before anyone else. He knew how to exploit Peter’s generally laid-back nature, and how to communicate with him on an intellectual and creative level. He’d done his homework. He knew who Peter was as an artist and a filmmaker, and he used that knowledge, in conjunction with his own status as a beloved icon of the British stage, to get deep inside Peter’s head. Ian’s portrayal of Gandalf was enhanced as a result.

Not that Peter was blind to the machinations. There is no chance of that. I think Peter genuinely respected Ian’s intelligence and dramatic sense, but I was awash in awe and envy and frustration that Ian was so clever at understanding the issues, and idea, not just within the movie and the story, but behind the scenes as well. He brought to the project and to the role a breadth of experience and a depth of knowledge unmatched by any other actor. He was a decorated Shakespearean stage actor; he’d costarred in the Hollywood blockbuster X-Men; he’d compiled an impressive and eclectic body of work in contemporary cinema. In short, he had gravitas. He had power, and he leveraged that power in negotiating with the studio, and in communicating with Peter and Fran and Philippa, so that their rewrites affected how his character appeared on the page, and subsequently on the screen. I was smart enough to recognize all of this, but not smart enough to figure out how to mimic Ian’s style in the best interest of my career or in the development of Samwise Gamgee.

More to the point, I wasn’t sure I wanted to follow his lead. My relationship with Ian was then, and remains to this day, somewhat of a disappointment. That’s my responsibility as much as his.

Ian is a brilliant man and obviously a serious actor, but he has a great sense of humor, too, which he’ll act on once in a while. There’s some great footage tucked away somewhere of Ian doing wardrobe tests, where he’s dressed as the venerable Gandalf the Grey in his long gray cloak, and suddenly he snaps out of character and launches into this little raunchy catwalk, with a glimpse of underwear, a flash of thigh—just a flamboyant gay guy having fun. And he did it fully aware that what made the performance amusing was that the star was Sir Ian McKellen, one of the greatest actors of our time.

Ian is complicated, though. He was perpetually annoyed at having to share a makeup bus with the boys. Elijah is the most passionate music lover you’ll ever want to meet, and our long days on the set usually began in the makeup trailer at 4:30 in the morning, with the ritual of Elijah taking out his CD binder and deciding what everyone would hear. Sometimes he’d take the temperature of the room and entertain suggestions from the other hobbits, and sometimes he wouldn’t. Many mornings I just wanted to read—I brought thirty-seven books with me to New Zealand, and used my three hours in the makeup chair to digest each and every one of them—but there were times when the choice of music made it difficult to concentrate. I just endured it quietly, because I knew it was important to Elijah and the other guys to get in the right frame of mind.

But Ian was less tolerant. He actually had himself removed to a different makeup station because he couldn’t take it anymore. The music, he said, was giving him a terrific headache. Ian had no problem registering his dissatisfaction with what he considered to be absolute rudeness on the part of the other actors. How did he do this? Well, when you entered the truck from the back, you’d see four makeup stations, then a door (almost a partition, really), and then a fifth station. Ian took this last station, and whenever he needed privacy, he would simply close the door.

I love and respect Ian. I think he’s an incredibly brave and articulate advocate for gay rights. I recognize his talent and his success for what it is. That said, I also know he can be selfish and self-centered. For example, I could write an entire chapter in this book called “Sir Ian McKellen Stole My Makeup Artist!” Because he’s Sir Ian McKellen, and because he’s smarter and funnier than I am, and because he’s farther ahead of the curve on most decisions than I am, Ian figured out how to work the politics of the corporation so that he could poach at will someone with whom I had developed a long working relationship. He didn’t ask for my opinion or permission; he just made sure that he was taken care of. Frankly, of course, he was entitled to this sort of treatment, and I got over it, but it was painful for a while. Now, changing makeup artists may not sound like a big deal, but when you’re spending three hours a day in a chair, you do develop a certain rapport with the person assisting in your transformation. One of my three makeup artists was a gifted, world-class craftsman named Jeremy Woodhead. We became good friends, hung out a lot, played tennis. But when Ian’s makeup artist quit to take another job, Jeremy greeted me one morning with the news that he was being reassigned. “I’m going to be working with Ian,” he said matter-of-factly. There was no debate, no negotiation.

When the Academy Award nominations came out in the spring of 2002, after the first movie, my publicist asked me to call a Los Angeles radio television station. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring had received thirteen nominations, including a best supporting actor nod for Ian McKellen, and I was asked to provide a few sound bites. So I called in and they put me on hold, and while I was listening to the show, guess who called in live from London? Ian McKellen! They congratulated Ian and chatted for a few minutes about his nomination and the film’s success, and then, to my great surprise, the host said, “So, Ian, what do you think of Sean Astin’s performance in the movie?”

Ian paused for a moment. Then he said cooly, “Oh, well, to be fair, he didn’t really have much to do now, did he?” The way he said it … well, it seemed they hadn’t told him I was on the phone, and they hadn’t told him that he was going to be answering that question, so it was an honest reaction. And yet it allowed for the possibility that he might have been kidding. So afterward the host said, “That’s funny, Ian, because guess who’s on the phone? Sean Astin! Sean did you hear what Ian just said?”

What could I do? I laughed. “Oh, Ian and I know exactly how we feel about one another. I just wanted to call and congratulate him. Congratulations, Ian, on an extremely well-deserved nomination.”

“Why, thank you so much, Sean. Good to hear from you.”

As I said, he’s complicated. While I was working on a television show in Vancouver in the summer of 2002, Ian was filming the X-Men sequel nearby, and I called him one day just to say hello. He invited me over to his place and we talked and had tea; then he drove me to the theater and introduced me to Dame Edna Everage, who I had never seen before, and we had a wonderful, interesting evening. We parted with an embrace and a kiss and a fare-thee-well. Unfortunately, it’s not always like that with Ian. He’s a towering presence, and when we see each other I always feel a bit disappointed that he’s not nearly as interested in me as I am in him.

Then again, I’m sure he has a lot of incredibly interesting people to choose from.