Returning from the 'Ring'

By Paul Lieberman
Los Angeles Times

Elijah Wood, right, was Frodo, and Sean Astin his stalwart friend Sam. They became off-screen buddies. Associated Press

Elijah Wood, who is given the job of saving the world (or Middle-Earth, at least) in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, began his career modeling little boys' clothing in a mall.

He was just 7 when his mother moved him from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Los Angeles in 1988, and his screen debut came almost immediately, with a small part in the second episode of "Back to the Future." Enough decent roles kept coming his way that he did not have time to do a single stage play or to complete high school.

He figured he could learn more "from life," anyway, and by working with the likes of Peter Jackson, the rumpled New Zealand director who had never grossed more than $3.1 million with a film in America before he began negotiating a deal to make three, for $300 million, based on J.R.R. Tolkien's cult-classic novels — arguably the greatest gamble in filmmaking history.

Jackson offered Wood the part of Frodo Baggins, the tiny hobbit who must carry the One Ring of corrupting power from his idyllic Shire to the top of Mount Doom, the only place where it can be destroyed and kept from the grasp of the Dark Lord Sauron.

Wood was a natural for the role because of his enormous blue eyes, which make him seem the epitome of wide-eyed innocence while also projecting sadness, terror or depth.

When the 18-year-old actor took off for New Zealand in the summer of 1999, it was only the second time he had been away from home on his own.

"There's the sense of 'I'm not familiar with any of these people, I'm in a foreign land, I'm by myself,' " he explains of his arrival in Wellington. But they took him to a cast dinner that first night, where Fran Walsh — Jackson's partner in filmmaking and life — plunked him next to Sean Astin, a fellow Angeleno in a mostly British cast, who was to play Samwise Gamgee, "Sam," his faithful hobbit companion and protector.

Dark lord of the debt

Wood says he felt "immediately comfortable" and remained so their nearly 16 months in New Zealand, with Astin becoming "like a brother."

Astin, however, was not so relaxed. The one who was supposed to do the soothing found himself on edge those many months, for a reason hard to imagine now — money.

Like Wood, Astin had been a child actor; he was the son of actress Patty Duke. His roles in films, including "Goonies" and "Rudy," enabled him to buy a house with wife Christine and toddler Alexandra, and then — closing escrow the day he got his "Rings" part — a fancier place nearby.

"I made a strategic mistake," Astin says. "Instead of leasing that house out and going to New Zealand and coming back with the money that I made, ... (it) went to sustain the house. It was like a $5,000-a-month kennel for the Siberian husky."

Who knew then if audiences or critics would get these movies, or if they might wind up another DVD on the shelf? His nervousness peaked right as the first episode, "The Fellowship of the Ring," was opening two Decembers ago.

While he was doing media at the Waldorf hotel, his wife told him she was pregnant again. "I thought I was going to collapse," he says. "My head was going to explode."

Triumph at the box office

Then the first "Rings" film took in nearly $1 billion worldwide and a year later so did the second, "The Two Towers," and both were acclaimed as far more than popcorn adventures — and with that, they were all but home free.

The third installment, "The Return of the King," comes out in two weeks. Jackson says it's his favorite of the trio, with the story's "triumphant" resolution on both the macro and micro levels: the grandeur coming from such new locales as Minas Tirith, "a seven-tiered city of kings," and a final battle of truly "biblical" proportions; and the close-up emotional drama coming from those little guys, Frodo and Sam as they climb that fiery mountain toward an abyss while struggling to save their souls if not their lives and, if they do it right, cement the standing of the trilogy of movies.

Wood's new hometown is New York. When he got back from New Zealand, he went into "hibernation" in Southern California, not even telling some friends he was back. "I didn't quite know what my own life meant free of a film," Wood says. "Suddenly it was up to me to dictate these things."

He switched coasts after making a movie in Manhattan last winter with Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." The night a blizzard blanketed the streets, he walked 40 blocks in "utter peace," then a few months ago bought an apartment in the Flatiron District — his first place that's truly his own. He does not have a car, preferring to join the crowds on the subway, a book bag over his shoulder.

It was in New York that he had a brief reunion with Astin, whom he's seen periodically since their primary filming concluded before Christmas 2000.

Last year, they went together — and stood in line — to attend the first public showing of a rival epic, "Star Wars: Episode 2, Attack of the Clones," at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

Wood was part of a delegation of "Rings" actors who visited the sets in Australia where George Lucas was making his latest series, back when the "Rings" crew felt "like a bit of a rogue group" in the shadow of that sci-fi franchise. Their status had changed by the time Astin ran into Lucas and his kids at a recent MTV awards show.

Wood got a taste of tabloid realities when he was linked briefly to actress Franka Potente — the "rumors" had his mother calling to ask if they'd secretly married.

That's "ex-girlfriend" history, Wood says, but his right hand still bears a ring the German beauty gave him, inscribed in Hebrew with the words of Hillel, a 1st-century rabbi: "If not now, when?"

"I just love the sentiment," Wood says, and lights a clove cigarette.

Shining moments

Looking back is at the heart of their key scene in "The Return of the King," a scene that provides another reminder of how long a trip it's been.

Wood recited his lines for it at three stages: In L.A., when he was a hopeful making his audition tape for Jackson; then in full costume, on the side of Mount Ruapehu, a volcano in New Zealand; and finally in September, during a looping session in London, part of the seemingly endless tweaking to make sure they don't blow what they've started with the trilogy.

Although a saga like this is fantastical by definition, Jackson's mantra was "make it feel real," as in the scenes on the mountain which he calls "the heart" of the film.

"If anybody is going to cry," the director says, "that's going to be the scene that will start them."

By phone from New Zealand, Jackson says he cried himself late one afternoon in May 2000, when they filmed Wood collapsed on the side of Mount Doom when he can't go on, "nor can he give the ring that he's carrying around his neck to Sam because Sam would not destroy it. He knows how powerful this thing is."

Jackson's favorite line from the films is Sam' declaring, "I can't carry it for you, Mr. Frodo, but I can carry you," and hoisting the exhausted hobbit onto his shoulder.

Aficionados of the genre say such moments might determine whether the nine-hour trilogy is remembered as a cut above other film epics. Science fiction writer Chris Claremont ("X-Men") views Jackson's as a rare "intimate epic," in which the spectacle is mere "eye candy," however awesome an army of 100,000 on a big screen may be. What makes the audience care is: Will Frodo find the strength to destroy the ring? Will Aragorn fulfill his destiny to be king? What's going to happen to Sam, the sidekick?