He wasn't even a twinkle in the director's eye when casting began for The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. However, Elijah Wood wanted the lead role of Fro do Bagginess so badly he made his own little movie to prove it.

As Elijah Wood walks into the room, it's impossible to ignore his ethereal air and an innocence that perhaps comes from his wide set blue eyes his child-like features or from the fact that he is still the bearer of the Ring. In fact, it is glaringly obvious that he is a hobbit, although at the beginning of casting for The Lord Of The Rings, it seems he was the only one who knew it.

"We never thought of or considered Elijah Wood," admits Peter Jackson. "We were thinking Fro do was probably going to be an unknown English actor. We were casting in London and we'd seen about 200 Foods and no one had even walked through the door that was right and we were starting to panic. Then videotape arrived in the mail and it was a tape that one of Elijah's friends had filmed on a camcorder. Elijah heard we were doing LOTR and he'd looked at the book and pulled out a few scenes and dressed himself up in costumer and went out into the woods behind his house and had a friend videotape him doing some stuff from the book."

"I mean, we would have never thought of Elijah Wood in our lives and suddenly we looked at this tape and this guy was Frodo Baggins," exclaims Jackson. "He was absolutely what we'd imagined Frodo to be like. So Elijah basically cast himself. He found us, we didn't find him."

In July 1999, Wood was signed to play Frodo Baggins. At the time, he felt he knew what would be involved. He was mistaken. LOTR was to take over Wood's life for the next 18 months, leaving him little time to breathe in anything not related to the world and creatures created by Tolkien. Much of the production was based out of Wellington and Wood made his home in Breaker Bay. He had friends there, a girlfriend and a regular life (on his one day off a week). He spent last Christmas in New Zealand and has referred to the country as "home".

If it hasn't already, LOTR will make 20-year-old Wood a household name. Until now, his career, which began at the age of seven, has been notable for quietly understated yet powerful performances in films such as The Ice Storm, Deep Impact, and The Good Son, in which he co-starred with child star Macauley Caulkin. While Caulkin's career flew high then inevitably disintegrated, Woods' star took a less histrionic and less publically-plauged rise. Wood is an actor who loves movies rather that being a movie star. But even that may not prepare him for what awaits.

ELIJAH WOOD: I hear there is a New Zealander here. Who is it?

PAVEMENT: It's me!

EW: Ohhh. Where are you from?

P: Wellington!

EW: Ah, god bless Wellington! I love it so much. I want to have a place there that I can go and visit. It's wonderful. It's home. I mean, I spent a year and a half of my life there.

P: I'm supposed to be interviewing you.

EW: Ohhhhh.

P: Sorry. How did Peter Jackson describe the scope of LOTR to you?

EW: Well, he sat me down and kind of had that conversation with me that was like, 'Are you prepared for this? Honestly, Elijah, can you tell me that you're prepared to take a year and a half out of your life to live in New Zealand and to work on three films that will be at times very challenging and at times very rewarding?'. I had already thought about that and was immediately interested in doing it. But he was like, 'You just have to take into consideration what you're doing here. Are you really prepared for it?'. And I was. He was describing to me what I had in my mind about it, that it would be a journey that we would all take together and it would be a journey that in some ways would mirror that of the book. It took place over a year and a half and the book takes place over a similar time period. What an honour to be able to go to New Zealand and in some way live out the books! So that was more than exciting to me. I think my excitement was kind of naive at the time. You can only predict so much. The reality is quite different, in some ways.

P: What was the reality?

EW: The reality was that it was a difficult experience. It was challenging. As much as you predict challenges you think, 'Oh, it will be hard. Sure, there'll be long hours. Whatever. But it will be great.' You can't really set yourself up for how the reality of it will really be. It was hard and I don't think I've ever been so tired in my life. It was physically hard in respect of endurance, the multiple days of the week we would word. I think in the middle of the schedule they put us on a six-day week.

P: That doesn't happen in the US?

EW: It does but just not so often. I think we got away with it alot more shooting in New Zealand than we would have shot in the States. This is a good thing and a bad thing, all at once. It obviously gave us the opportunity to work in a very organic was and a very fluid way. But also, I think it increased the fatigue and made it much more challenging as well. In the end, it allowed us to shoot three movies over the period of a year and a half, which, if you really think about it, is not really long enough to film three films of this magnitude. It was massively challenging. But, on the other side, the things we gained from the experience I couldn't have imagined. I mean, we travelled to tops of mountains. We saw pieces of New Zealand that some New Zealanders haven't seen. I made some of the best friends of my life. There were far too many positives to the experience than negatives.

P: How much pressure did the books' massive following put on you?

EW: That anxiety hit me when I first went to New Zealand and I realised I had to embody a character that so many people are familiar with and have lived with in a sense for years. It put me in a situation that I'd never really been in before. Luckily, we had about two months before filming to rehearse and physically prepare. And also, more for me, to mentally prepare for the role and for the experience. In the process, I was finally able to find my comfort in playing Frodo. It was on the first day of filming that is just kind of happened. I think up until the first day, I was worried whether I had found Frodo or not. I know everything about him and had all the information straight. It was more about whether on the day I would feel comfortable doing it and whether I'd lose that anxiety or the pressure of the fans. And I did.

P: How did you know you'd actually found the character?

EW: On the first couple of days, it was just the four hobbits. Pur dynamic as friends became the dynamic of the four hobbits, so when the camera started rolling, we just were. We were so comfortable with each other. I think if I'd started working on a scene that was just Frodo, it may have been a different story. We were already amazing friends and has spent ever our free time together before we started filming. And from there, Frodo grew. It was a process. I think I reached Frodo's end towards the middle of production when I'd kind of explored all the areas that Frodo had to go. You see, Frodo goes through quite a change in the story.

P: It's an epic journey.

EW: Absolutely. Everybody had their character but Frodo's is one of the darker parts. He goes from someone who is very innocent and naive to someone who is merely a shadow of his former self. It was a brilliant challenge and somewhere I'd never gone as an actor before.

P: Is there a moment that stays in your memory from the making of the film?

EW: Oh, there are some many. I was working on a stage next to Viggo [Mortensen], who was doing a battle sequence, and he got hit in the mouth and broke his front tooth. It was literally gone and he found the tooth on the floor and he wanted to Superglue it. He was like, 'Get me some Superglue and we can keep going.' hat was a good example of everyone's passion. And it also clearly describes Viggo. Everyone was like, 'We've gotta get you to a dentist', and he was actually angry that they took him away and stopped filming so he could go to a dentist. He wanted to keep going. And I think everyone shared in that love of the project and the passion. We did work under extremes. But, you know, as much as it mattered, it also didn't matter to us. I mean, I certainly don't want to paint the picture in a negative light because it wasn't at all negative. We were so in love with what we were doing and so passionate and proud of it that we would go to any lengths to accomplish what we felt needed to be accomplished.

P: What did you do in your time off?

EW: I had a house by the Ocean in Breaker Bay. Do you know it? It's great. The weekends were just spending time with all the friends I'd made, hanging out. I think the greatest experiences I had in terms of free time were travelling. We shot at the north tip of the South Island and then we had about three or four days to get from that location to Queenstown and I decided to drive down the coast. It was truly fantastic.

P: Do you think the film could have been made by an American director in the US?

EW: This book is so rooted in English culture, which would be a difficult thing for an American filmmaker to handle. Peter Jackson, being from New Zealand, had his own sensibilities. When I heard he was going to direct it, I thought it was absolutely perfect. I couldn't think of anyone else that could do it. He's got a sort of wildness about him, a characterness different from any filmmaker I've ever seen. He also has an amazing imagination and a penchant for brilliant visuals that I knew would really lend itself to LOTR. And New Zealand itself, Peter Jackson aside, is Middle-earth. I couldn't imagine anywhere else in the world that would work more perfectly than New Zealand.

P: Was it difficult to do another project after LOTR?

EW: It was difficult. LOTR meant a lot to me personally and in terms of being an actor. It was a comfort zone, in some way. Every film you work on, you average three to four months. It's you own little world for that time and then you move on. That three to four-month period is something that I'm used to and it's easy to switch gears and do something else. LOTR was a year and a half. It felt like a lifetime. So going from that and come home, trying to get myself into what life meant again, was very difficult. It still is difficult, it a way, because that comfort zone of the film is gone in terms of actually being in New Zealand. Putting myself into a different role was really weird, especially since the first thing I did after LOTR was literally a 20-day shoot. I worked eight of the days and the speed that we worked was just ridiculous. It was this movie that Ed Burns wrote and directed called Ash Wednesday and it was so completely different that it was almost like s shock to the system. It was very challenging, in a different way, shedding that LOTR skin.

P: I heard that after the film, you kept the Ring. Is that right?

EW: I was actually given the Ring. I didn't just keep it. The last time I went back for pick-ups, I went to the edit suite to say goodbye to Peter and ran yet again. Goodbyes are always terrible leaving New Zealand. And they said, 'We have a gist for you.' And I was like, 'You don't have to give me a gift.' And I opened this beautiful wooden, sculptured box and there was the Ring. That was just overwhelming, the symbolism. There were a few rings but this is the One Ring.