Timeout Interview

RING OF CONFIDENCE

The year's other eagerly awaited film adaptation is Peter Jackson's £100m 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy. Now fans are clamouring to see whether the Kiwi director has done justice to Tolkien's masterpiece, and whether 20-year-old Elijah Wood can really fill the shoes of hobbit Frodo Baggins. The omens are good…

Interview Dominic Wells Photography Frank Bauer

'Lord of the Rings', the trilogy voted in several turn-of-the-millennium polls best book of the twentieth century, becomes the greatest film gamble of the twenty-first. Usually, Hollywood waits for box-office gold before green-lighting sequels: here, for the first time ever, all three books have been filmed at once.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are riding on the first film, 'The Fellowship of the Ring'. And much of that pressure weighs on the slender shoulders of its 20-year-old star, Elijah Wood. He should be used to that by now. Wood plays Frodo Baggins, a young 'hobbit' also entrusted with an awesome mission: withhold the One Ring from its Lord, the evil Sauron, lest he enslave Middle-earth ('One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them'). Resisting its corrupting power as well as the armies of evil, he must carry the Ring to the darkest depths of Mordor, and hurl it into the Cracks of Doom. And though Frodo and his friends are assisted by the stoutest and bravest among dwarves, elves, wizards and the new race of men, the strongest of all turn out to be the little hobbits.

In the films, young Wood is assisted by such veteran thesps as Ian McKellen, Christopher Lee and Ian Holm, but it is he who has to carry the trilogy. "Fifteen months shooting!" he says. "Part of me probably did go crazy, but it was an incredible experience, a journey for all of us that mirrored the book, a real endurance test." Midway through the arduous filming in New Zealand's breathtaking mountainscapes, they scaled up to six-day weeks. "None of us have been that tired or fatigued in our lives. But just when you start to forget what you're part of, you think: It's 'Lord of the Rings'!-and it lifts you up again."

It is a classic 'underdog' tale in which the little people (quite literally-hobbits are only 3'6") triumph over the most powerful, where the most ordinary can shine when called upon to do extraordinary things. Therein lies much of its enduring appeal, even with those who initially shrink from the idea of reading something that has a) has heroes with names like Baggins and b) is debated at conventions and on internet sites. When 'The Fellowship of the Ring' was first published in 1954, the Sunday Times wrote that the world would be divided into two kinds of people: "Those who have read 'The Lord of the Rings' and those who are going to." The world is now equally divided: between those who read it and loved it, and those who would rather stick Elf-darts in their eyes.

Their loss. Not only is 'The Lord of the Rings' an epic tale of breathtaking imagination that has more in common with Norse legends than the '70's rock albums, Dungeons & Dragons games, and Roger Deans posters it inspired, but it also has rather more substance than, say, 'Star Trek' as a source of nerdish nit-picking. For though you can buy a Klingon dictionary and blueprints of the Warp Drive, these were all invented after the fact to feed the fan industry, whereas J.R.R. Tolkien, an Oxford don specializing in Anglo-Saxon and Middle-English, wrote 'The Lord of the Rings' partly to make use of the complicated histories, geography, and especially languages-15 of them in all-he had already devised for its imaginary setting of Middle-earth.

And in a grisly way, it has never been more topical. On publication, nearly half a century ago, critics saw it as an allegory of WWII. Not quite. 'It is neither allegorical nor topical,' Tolkien later wrote. 'One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.' Tolkien had fought in the Battle of the Somme, and spent most of 1917 in hospital with trench fever.

Now the West is at war again, the clash between Good and Evil will once more strike a chord (nearly too closely-the second part, fortunately not out until the end of next year, is entitled 'The Two Towers'). "That can't hurt," agrees Wood. "Those themes of courage and honour and standing by each other to overcome evil are more relevant than in a long time." He is behind the war, though in a more thoughtful way than some of his compatriots. "Bin Laden is a complete rejection of everything Islam stands for. It's unfortunate people in America don't know enough about Islam, because bin Laden's interpretation is complete bollocks. In fact, the actual definition of a jihad includes that you are not supposed to kill women and children, you can't destroy buildings, or a tree that has leaves on it. Technically, they are not issuing a jihad; they are making their religion fit the way it feels."

He also adds, charmingly, that he feels "quite proud" of Tony Blair's handling of the crisis. "He's a little bit more….literate than our president." Education is important to Wood. Intelligent and articulate (we discuss favorite Shakespearean flicks for quite a while-he enjoyed the Branagh four-hour 'Hamlet'; I outpseud by countering with the 1964 Kozintsev), onscreen, too, he has always seemed a wise head on young shoulders. It made him a remarkable child actor, and it is carrying him through that difficult transition to grown-up star. If you don't recognize the name, you'll have seen many of his films: after bit parts in 'Internal Affairs' and 'Back to the Future II', he landed his first plum role at just eight, in Barry Levinson's 'Avalon'. Since then, there has been 'The Good Son', opposite Macaulay Culkin; Rob Reiner's 'North'; 'Forever Young' with Mel Gibson; 'The War' with Kevin Costner; 'Flipper' with Paul Hogan; 'The Ice Storm', memorably making out with Christina Ricci wearing Nixon masks; and lately blockbusters 'Deep Impact' and 'The Faculty'.

"I've always felt older. It's something throughout my life I've always dealt with,' says the actor who, at the age of eight, left Dad behind in Iowa when Mum, sis, and bro uprooted to LA to pursue showbiz. "I spent the majority of my childhood working among adults. I'm 20 now and I'm just starting to catch up with how I feel. I couldn't relate at all to teenagers my age."

Which is tricky when you're interviewed by Just 17 about your favorite colours. He surprised one interviewer when a group of giggling teenage girls approached their table and asked Wood to 'say something' for their video camera. He closed his eyes for a moment and stifled the giggles by proclaiming: "There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self."

"That's from Siddhartha. It was bugging me about where it came from, I couldn't find it anywhere and then I saw it on a Radiohead website."

Such web literacy is good news for Brandy who posts messages to 'Lord of the Rings' site Imladris.net under the moniker 'Masseuse of Frodo's Harem'. I invited the fans to contribute questions the night before interviewing Wood, and got a dozen good ones. (Though the self-styled 'High Queen of Arnor' just said: "I don't think I would ask Elijah anything-I'd just stare. There's something about his eyes…")

Though Wood is alarmed at what harder devotees will think of him when they discover he hasn't actually read 'Lord of the Rings', or 'The Hobbit', he is chuffed by the notion of questions from fans.

First up: You worked with Ian Holm on 'Lord of the Rings'. Ian Holm was Frodo in the BBC radio version [recorded 1981, to be repeated on Radio 4 in January 2002]. Did you talk to him about that?

"The pathetic sad thing is, I didn't ask him about it once! Of all actors, Ian Holm resonated Bilbo more perfectly than anyone. To see him come alive in such a realistic way was a treat. He's the Daddy-he fuckin' is, man. He came in for two weeks, and was done, but he was amazing. All of us were in awe. Suddenly this guy comes and Bilbo arrives."

Would you like to act on stage?

"Yeah, I have considered it. Facing one's fears-that's something that really freaks me out, or I really want to do it."

Are you religious or spiritual in any way?

"Yeah, probably more spiritual than religious. I'm not a huge believer in or supporter of organized religion. It's run by people, and people tend to tarnish the purity of what religion is about. I was raised a Christian, I believe in the Bible as that's a good thing-I believe more in a personal relationship with God than having to go through priests."

"I believe in prayer. Yes, and that it is listened to. I do believe my life has been blessed-so much during my 20 years that I can't believe there's not someone looking out for me."

And how about if you had not been so blessed? Wouldn't you change your tune?

"People have free will. They have a choice to lead the lives they have. There are people who are unlucky or born into challenging lives, but everyone has the choice and the power to move themselves out of a difficult position." What was the hardest scene to film?

"Probably the scene at the end of the third book, where Frodo is a shadow of himself, nearly taken over by the Ring, it almost becomes like a drug. He's an addict in a way, he's afraid of anyone taking it over. How to go play that, that was challenging." He's been smoking so hard during this interview, I can hear the wheeze in his lungs. Couldn't he just imagine someone taking his cigarettes away? He laughs. And finally at the end, the 20-year-old peeks through. How will it feel, when trying to be taken seriously as an actor, to be immortalized as an action figure?

"Man, the action figure is a bonus! I'm a collector, so that's pretty frikkin' cool."