This is the coolest interview of DOm that I've ever read, it's not new or anything, I just wanted it in my journal. Anyone know the date for this?

Official Fanclub interview
Lord of the rings official magazine

For British actor Dominic Monaghan, picking up and moving to a new country for more than a year to shoot The Lord of The Rings wasn’t a daunting proposition. Monaghan spent the first 11 years of his life as a bit of a nomad, travelling around Europe with his parents – his father is a teacher, and his mother is a nurse – and his older brother. “ That kind of informed a little bit of my personality,” Monaghan says. “ I’ve always been outgoing and was always trying to be the centre of attention as a little boy…loud and cheeky and naughty. I was moving around so much I had to make friends quite quickly as a kid. Every three years, we would move to a different city, and I would have to constantly be impressing myself onto people immediately, because I knew I had only had three years to be friends with them before I took off.”

Monaghan’s acting career began in earnest after his family settled in Manchester. He became involved with the Manchester Youth Theatre, where his performances and persistence enabled him to hire an agent. Monaghan went off to college and began studying English literature, drama, and geography, but then he won a role in the British TV series, “Hetty Weinthropp Investigates,” which lasted for four years. “ In between [filming], I would do theatre in Manchester and London,” Monaghan remembers. “ That was how it all started. I did intend to go to Drama College, but I just fell into work very early. I was very lucky.”


The many months spent filming The Lord of The Rings in New Zealand were, not surprisingly, full of amazing experiences for a young actor, Monaghan says, not least among them the off-set adventures – including surfing and bungee-jumping – he enjoyed with his cast- mates. He admits he was pleasantly surprised to find that the more experienced actors - such as the legendary Sir Ian McKellen – embraced the greener actors in the cast and jumped right into the after-hour fun, readily going out on the town with everyone. Monaghan was so struck by New Zealand itself that he plans to make the country his permanent home – quite an endorsement from a guy who has led such a nomadic life.


When we caught up with Monaghan the week after the Oscars, he was headed up the California coast for a weekend of surfing with – appropriate enough – fellow Hobbit Billy Boyd by his side.

What drew you to acting?
Growing up, I was always the class clown, doing impressions of my teachers and entertaining my brother. Teachers saw that I was pretty comfortable with speaking in public and relished that kind of attention, so they started putting me in school plays. The first thing I remember doing was playing Joseph in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream coat” at school. I was about 8, and I had the majority of the lines; I really enjoyed getting into the character. Everyone else would be out playing football and things like that, and I would be looking at the script and getting into it and thinking, ”That can I do to change myself and be different?” From the time I was about 11 or 12, it was my main passion apart from football (or soccer, as the American say). I would read plays, write plays, watch films, and try to concentrate on my favourite actors and work out what was so good about their performances.


I was obsessed by film at a pretty young age. My dad would always go to the video shop on a Friday night and get a movie for my brother and me for Saturday morning, because my mum and dad, like any parents, liked to have a lie-in on Saturday. I would set my alarm clock for 6 or 7 in the morning and watch the film again on my own. Then, when my brother woke up, I’d watch the film again with him, and I’d talk to him about it – “Oh, this is great!” or “I really like this bit” I’m sure I really annoyed the hell out of my brother doing stuff like that!

How did you get involved in The Lord of The Rings?
I was doing a program called “ I-TV” in France, and just before leaving to start that, I was finishing up a play in London; I was playing a skinhead. I went in for audition – a generic Hobbit audition – but the day I went in. I had a really bad cold and [as a result] a really deep voice. And obviously, I looked nothing like a Hobbit since I had not hair! I didn’t think I had a chance to get the part, so I read [for it], left, and tried to forget about it. Then I came back from France for another audition…I met Pete [Jackson] and spoke to him on the phone a couple of times for an hour or so.


Later, when I had about a week left to go to France, my agent called and said, “ I need to know where you’re going to be all day, because you may need to fly to L.A… or you may even fly to New Zealand to have a final [meeting]. “ Then he called back a couple of hours later and said,” You don’t need to fly anywhere. They just offered you the part.” At that particular point, I was in a truckload of actors on our way back from the set after finishing for the day. So, it was me and about 15 actors in a “people-carrier” on the French motorway, and I got off the phone beaming and incredibly happy because I’d just been offered this part. One of my friends said,” What was all that about?” and I said,” I’ve just been offered a part in The Lord of The Rings.” And the whole coach-load of actors was just like, “ Oh ****ing hell…” There were only a couple of people on the coach that I really felt like were pleased. Most of the actors were like,” Jesus Christ! Jammy bastard!” That was good fun.


Then it was all exciting; I had a week left to film on this program, and [then] I had to go back to Manchester and move out of my house. My grandma was really ill, so I knew I probably wouldn’t see her again. I was spending time with her and my family and packing. I had just four days to do all that, and then I left for New Zealand for a year and a half. It was a trip. I was one of the last people to arrive, so I was kind of the new kid for a week or so, which was interesting.

Tell me what you remember about your first day in New Zealand
You fly to New Zealand pretty early in the morning, and by that point, you’re kind of spaced out. It’s about a 32-hour journey and I’d never flown that far before. I was under the impression that I’d have a day to recuperate. But I was in the hotel for about an hour, when I was picked up and taken to the set, where I saw Pete again. We sat down and talked about the part and what we were going to be doing in the first month and a half of the rehearsal process. He then took John Rhys-Davies and I – we flew in the same day – on a tour around the set. We got to see Bilbo’s Hobbit hole and a couple of things like that…the initial building of Orthanc,etc. Then I went up to have a costume fitting, and Billy Boyd was in the wardrobe department with Elijah Wood. That was the first time I met those guys; I turned the corner, and we looked at each other, jumped about, and hugged each other! It was a very interesting meeting, because you realize that you’re going to have to work with there people on the probably closest basis for a year and a half through the whole trilogy…and the first thing that we did was hug each other, so it was amazing.


We hung out for the rest of that day, and Billy and I went to a place called the Crazy Lounge in Wellington and had a cup of coffee and just tried to get to know each other and work it all out. [Later], I met Orlando in the hotel reception. That night, we went to a Turkish restaurant. It was an easy transition into spending 24 hours a day with these guys. From the get-go, I just really enjoyed all their company.


In that first week that I was in New Zealand, my grandma died, so I was calling back to my mum and dad a lot and working out what to do; [I was glad I had] said “ goodbye” to her when I was in Manchester. So, it was a bit of a weird couple of weeks at the start, but [getting to know everyone] was good fun.

How would you describe Merry?
The thing about merry that was different from the other Hobbits is that, as well as having a normal Hobbit-y nature of being quite carefree about things and wanting to enjoy the good things in life, Merry is quite sharp. He can read situations well and he’s not a pushover. I think that in the Shire, he’s been giving quite a lot of respect because he’s well-read and comes fro quite a well-to-do family [that is also quite sharp]. I think the other hobbits respect his opinion and want to know what he thinks about things. They look to him for a little bit of advice, certainly in terms of orienteering…where they’re going and what to do next. So that was a way in for me for Merry.


I think Pippin’s humour comes from a very genuine, innocent sense of himself – he’s funny in a very cute kind of way. Merry tends to be a little more cynical about things – his humour has kind of an edge to it. He probably worries a little bit more than Pippin. That’s probably due to the fact that he’s always felt responsible. Then, in the Fellowship – certainly in the first movie – he didn’t know what his place was, because now you’ve got a whole group of very dynamic people leading the way, merry, to a certain extend, loses his responsibility [for] looking out for people; he doesn’t really know what to do, so he reverts back to being a playful Hobbit. As the trilogy moves on, he gets separated from certain people and starts to take hold a little bit; his intelligence comes through. He desperately wants to prove himself and contribute something to the Fellowship. I don’t think he’s too scared about dying as you move forward into the trilogy, because he realizes that once he’s on his journey, the chances are that he will be sacrificing himself for the greater good.

How would you describe Merry and Pippin’s relationship?
I think it’s probably the most genuine show of friendship in the whole trilogy. You’ve got Legolas and Gimli, who became friends over the course of the trilogy, but right now from the start, Merry and Pippin are best mates. Frodo and Sam are very close, but that’s more in a kind of servant-master element. But Merry and Pippin are equals, you know?


Back in the Shire, when everything was fine, they enjoyed sitting in the sun, smoking their pipes, drinking, chasing Hobbit girls …the types of thinks that young Hobbits do. But once they’re on this quest, I think they lean on each other for strength and guidance. What I love about Merry and Pippin in the movies – something that you see in the second movie quite a lot and certainly in the third movie – is that a lot of their friendship goes unspoken. All they need is to look in each other’s direction, and it gives them both hope that they’re going to get through this thing.

When we interviewed Billy Boyd, he talked about the differences in Merry’s and Pippin’s relationships with Treebeard. How would you describe Merry’s relationship with Treebeard as compared to Pippin’s?
Instead of looking at the big picture and thinking,” Okay, how do I work through this situation to the best of my abilities? How do I need to talk to Treebeard to get what I want?” Merry is impatient and impulsive. Outside of the shire, he’s not someone that people necessarily think will have an opinion that is worth hearing, so he gets frustrated quite a lot – with Treebeard, that’s certainly the case. Treebeard’s very nature is to be slow and methodical about things, and Merry likes to push things forward. Even though people sometimes look at Pippin and think he’s the more gullible character, what happened in that particular story [line] is that Pippin realized that the best way to do it is to come at Treebeard from a different angle and talk to him in such a way that he will listen.

There are so many talented behind-the-scenes people working on there films. During filming, did you notice any behind-the-camera jobs that you wished you could do or found particularly fascinating?
They had an insect wrangler on The Lord of The Rings, and that is the main job that I would have wanted outside my job. I love insects; they’re probably one of my biggest passions in life! The insect wrangler would come in with giant centipedes, spiders. wetas [ a New Zealand insect ], crickets, butterflies, moths, etc., and whenever he was on the set, I would always be on the outskirts, looking at all the tanks and asking him what was what. There was a scene in Fellowship where a spider crawls across my shoulder; I loved that because – not to get too geeky here – they’re the most successful animals on the planet. This is the insects’ world; it’s not ours. We just live in it. They have managed to take over every part of the world, so they demand our respect. I absolutely love them, so “insect wrangler” would be [a great job]!

We invited Peter Jackson recently, and he told us about trying to find a spider to serve as model for Shelob. He revealed that he chose the tunnel web, a New Zealand spider, and confessed that he has a bit of arachnophobia.
He sure does – poor guy! There was a situation where we were on set, and a weta was crawling halfway up Pete’s bare leg – he always wears shorts, you know – and you could hear him shrieking from the other side of the set. (Imitates Jackson shrieking) “ A weta! A weta! A weta!” Someone came over and grabbed it off his calf…Pete Jackson is definitely not too fond of the creepy crawlies, which I think is interesting for someone who’s so into blood, gore, guts, and intestines! He’s a little bit scared of spiders, and he’s a little bit scared of helicopters, and he’s a little bit scared of heights. He’s got a lot of phobias for a guy who tends to scare the living daylights out of people with his movies!


I think Pete’s keen for Shelob to have a New Zealand identity. I showed him a few pictures of spiders and said,” This is what I thought of Shelob.” The picture I have in my head of Shelob is kind of like a female black widow, which has a really big, oversize abdomen but then very long black spiny legs with a couple of hairs coming off them – something that looks like it’s holding on to a lot of juice. Less tarantula, more black widow.

There were actors of every level of experience working on the film, but due to the time commitment and the nature of the project, I imagine that it was unique for everyone, even someone like Sir Ian McKellen. Many people have told us it was a life changing experience. Was that the case for you?
Without question. I’m going back to New Zealand in about a month or two. I’m looking at property there and hope to buy something by the end of this year, so I can be there for Christmas. So in terms of where my life is going and where I’ll be living a huge majority of my life, my life turned at a right angle once I went to New Zealand, because it felt like home more than any other place I’ve ever been. Even after travelling round Europe throughout my childhood, I never felt more at home that I did in New Zealand.

When you’re doing it [The Lord of The Rings] and moving so quickly, you don’t realize how lucky you are and what an incredibly blessed life you’re living. It’s certainly the most happy I’ve ever been in my life. We had the most adventures and really embraced the country, and [it] embraced us. As you mentioned, people like Christopher Lee and Ian McKellen said, “ We’ll never do a job like this again.”


And you meet friends you’ll know the rest of your life; they’re become family now. I’m sure my kids will call Elijah “Uncle Elijah”, and Billy will probably be the godfather to my kids. At the time, you enjoy yourself, and you’re having a great laugh, and you don’t tend to think about it too much. Then when you finish the job, you realize how changed you are. I think I arrived in New Zealand a lot angrier, with a lot more to prove than I feel now. It made me a lot more secure in myself. A lot of that Mancunian [from Manchester] fight that I still kind of hang on to…that attitude really mellowed out while I was in New Zealand. We got into surfing heavily for a year and a half – learning to surf is probably one of the greatest things I’ve done with my life up to now. When you’re living a crazy life and things are moving so fast, a weekend where you can get into the water, take stock of what you’ve been up to, and just spend a few hours catching waves and enjoying the sunshine is a true gift.

Let me go ahead and ask you the question that Billy wanted us to ask you. He’d like to know your 18 favourite things about him.
My 18 favourite things? Okay. #1 – The space between his nose and his lip. I think it’s called the filtrum. That’s f-i-l-t-r-u-m. Billy’s got a fantastic filtrum. You know how babies have that very cute, sweet little filtrum? Billy’s got the exact same thing! So that would be my #1favourite thing about Billy (aside) He’s telling me now what to say now, but I’m not going to!


#2 – Very small, dainty hands and feet, which makes him very dexterous; anything that he does with his hands is always very precise. #3 – Quite big biceps for such a small man. Big strong arms. #4 – Funny- #5 – His hair. There’s something very interesting with his hair. When he’s in a good mood, he spikes it all up, so he looks like a complete lunatic. #6 – His voice…very good. #7 He’s got quite enchanting eyes. You know how it is with the eclipse? If you keep looking at it for a certain amount of time, you can’t stop – you have to keep looking at it. That’s like Billy’s eyes – if you look at them for more than 20 or 30 seconds, then you’re hooked. There have been a couple of times in bars where I’ve had to actually pull girls away, so they’d stop looking at his eyes…[otherwise] you’ll be there for the rest of your life! #8 – I really liked the smell of his car when we were in New Zealand, because we used to keep our surfboards in there, and his car just absolutely reeked of rotting wetsuits and sand and protein shakes. Billy didn’t care about that. #9 – He got me into a couple of bands I really liked. #10 – Choice of movies. He’s got a very good taste in films. #11 – Oh, here’s another good thing about Billy: If you’re ever in a restaurant where you’ve never been before, Billy will always pick the restaurants main meal – the one that they do the best. No matter what it is, he’ll always go for it. #12 – Fear of heights. Billy’s got a great fear of heights that he just doesn’t question. I’m very scared of heights too, and when we went to this bungee jump, I said to him,” We’re going to conquer our fear of heights. Come on, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll do a bungee jump, and then you can always say you did it.” And Billy was like, “ No. I’m afraid of heights, and that’s what I’m sticking to.” I like that! #13 – Sleeps like a dormouse at any opportunity. If Billy’s given 25 minutes to sleep, he’ll do it. Whereas if I’m given 25 minutes to sleep, I’ll run off and get a drink, go and call someone, play with my Playstation…do 50 million things at the same time and get frustrated. #14 – Good surfer, He’s my main surfing buddy, which is always a good thing. He’s also my scuba-diving buddy and my kayaking and canoeing partner. So we have a great relationship both in and out of the water. #15 – Always shares his food. When we’re in a restaurant, Billy will always say, “ Try this! #16 – We enjoy drinking pretty much the same amount, which is nice. If you’re going to spend a year and a half with someone, it’s good if you drink on the same level! Billy and I can keep up with each other, which is essential. #17 – I love the fact that he chose 17 favourite things because he knew I could only think of 16!

Actually, it’s 18.
Oh really. (Boyd is heard giggling loudly) my 18th one is…let me think. Oh – the fact that he always leaves his sunglasses everywhere. While I’ve been with him, he’s probably lost about seven or eight pairs. In New Zealand, he’d just leave them on café tables. What I used to do is just pick them up automatically, and a couple of hours later, he’d say, “ Oh, ****!” I left my sunglasses!” I’d say, “ No, Billy…here you go! That was my job: picking up sunglasses.

You really are like an old married couple. You know each other so well…
We kind of are! There are a lot of gay rumours rife on the Internet.

I really didn’t mean it that way!
Well, [there are rumours]! We spend so much time together. We enjoy each other’s company. We’re constantly walking up and down the red carped with an arm around each other and chatting and all that kind of stuff. So the rumours are rife! There was also a rumour about Elijah and me that Ian McKellen told us about – we were having an affair in L.A.! But you know, I’m not going to confirm or deny! (laughs) [Billy and I] do fit like a jigsaw. Still now, three or four years down the line of knowing each other, we’ll manage to make each other crack up in tears of laughter…and fascinate each other, which is [the perfect] relationship. Maybe we will get married in a couple of years! If he was a girl, I’d marry him today! I’ve been suggesting to Billy a sex change, but he really feels quite manly about things. (Boyd shouts, “ I love women”) Yes, he’s very passionate about women, as I am.


You know what else is interesting? Even though we spend so much time together, and we went to the same bars, we tended not to fight over women. Billy has a girlfriend right now and has for a while, but when we were single in New Zealand, we never really chased after the same women. Billy liked girls that looked a little bit different [than the ones I liked], and we always gave each other quite a wide berth. Besides, I can’t compete with Billy for a woman because he has that incredible mind…(pauses) But I also have that incredible body! Thinking about both of us…I mean there must be a few girls out there who would think that the combination of Billy and Dom must be like a dream! It’s like putting Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise together, you know.

I can’t wait to get the letters to the editor in response to that one.
You should definitely put in the article that I’m single, and I like women!

We have a few questions that members sent in for you. Maria Phillips of London asks; If you had to choose one item of Merry’s wardrobe to wear at a film award ceremony, what would it be and why?
I’d probably go with Merry’s jacket. Merry wears a really nice green felt jacket that is kind of dressy. I think out of all the hobbits, merry is probably the most vain. He actually cares about his clothes. He’s probably the guy who would be the most ****-ed if he fell down and got his jacket dirty or got a hole in his trousers. So when I was doing the wardrobe fittings with Ngila [Dickson, the costume designer], the thing that we responded to well together was that fact that he’s a smart, kind of snappy dresser [for a Hobbit]. In the third movie, he wears a lot of armour and looks pretty cool in that, but you couldn’t really wear that to a film show and get away with it. I could definitely wear my green jacket and a pair of jeans and look pretty cool…in fact, I probably wear it! At some particular point, I’ll ask if I can wear my jacket to a film red carpet!

I think Maria will be thrilled to hear that. Michelle Walton asks: How has being thrust into the spotlight affected you? Have you had any spooky or bizarre experiences?
Billy and I were talking about this about 15 minutes ago. We’re both very keen on impressing people the fact that fame and fortune don’t necessarily make your life perfect. My life is very, very good, but the problems that [everyone] experiences through life – frustrations with work, money, family, and friends…time constraints – you still experience those even if you’re “famous.” Just because you’re in a movie, that doesn’t mean that everything about your life is great. I guess I still try and hang onto the things I find important…my mates and family.


You get recognized a little bit more on the street; you get people coming over to you, but it’s never a negative kind of thing. It’s always really positive – people come over and want to tell you how much they enjoy your work and how great they think the movies are. The passion for the movies has been incredible, but we feel the same way. We love the films, we watch them all the time, and we love going on the Internet and looking at fan sites and realising the audience’s reaction to what we do.


The key word in my life over the past three or four years has been balance. Ultimately, your life is all about learning lessons and balancing things out. I’ve been so lucky with opportunities that have been thrown at me…sometimes in the life that I’m living, you get to fly to New York and go to a premiere and meet people you have admired for so long. The balance of that is being on your own quite a lot…the artistic frustration of constantly wanting to work, wanting to get that kind of artistic impulse out of you and not being able to do it. In the past couple of years, I’ve tried to get as much into writing, painting, drawing, and poetry [ as I can ]. That was a lesson I learned from Viggo [ Mortensen ] in New Zealand. We spent a couple of nights together drinking whiskey and hanging out and reading poetry and short stories to each other. He impressed on me [the idea that], “You’re an artist, and as an artist, you can’t really censor yourself. Don’t be ashamed of the fact that you might want to draw or paint or write. Those are all positive artistic things.”

Several Fan Club members – including Meredith Martibi of Maryland – wrote in to say they had read a news report about you buying a forest and hoped you would tell us the story firsthand.
I’ve been living in L.A. for about a year and a half now, and I’ve been spending time with a couple of environmental groups – splinter groups of Greenpeace [called] Heart Magic and Future Forests. More than anything, I’ve just been socialising with these guys. I’m really interested in other people’s opinions about the world.


I went to Borneo when I was 17 years old and went into the rainforest looking for orang-utans and was completely fascinated. In any given square meter in the rainforest, there are hundreds of thousands of animals and organisms that are being sustained, and we are cutting down the equivalent of eleven football pitches [fields] of rainforest a day that is not being replaced. When I was told [about] this, I was completely horrified.


I spent a couple of days hanging out with this guy named Dan Morrell, who runs Future Forests. He was talking about this project called Carbon Neural, which is something that the band Coldplay got into…I’m a big fan of Coldplay, and I really enjoy their politics. [Dan] told me that Coldplay had become Carbon Neutral by figuring out how much carbon they use in a year and then offsetting that by plating trees. I was very interested in that, [so] he did some research and called me a couple of weeks later and said, “ If you want, you can have a small forest right next to the Coldplay forest. ”It’s in a place called Bangalore in northern India, where I travelled last New Year’s Eve with Orlando. It’s a beautiful part of the world. I worked out how much carbon I use year round in terms of flying on planes, the amount of music and films that I buy, and the waste that I make. I was able to buy a small mango tree forest…it can be farmed by the [nearby] villages; through that, they can make a bit of money, and they can replant more forest. It’s just a great thing, [all of this] something very close to Billy’s and my experience while we were doing the Treebeard thing. [J.R.R.] Tolkien [gave] nature a voice, and hopefully we have picked up that baton, and we give [nature] a voice through doing these kinds of interviews.

One of our readers wrote in and said she just wanted to scream when people like me ask you guys the same questions all the time. On my behalf, are there questions that you wish interviewers would ask you?
Any kind of current affairs [questions]. I’ve always had strong opinions about things going on in the world. Obviously, we’re in a job where people are going to ask us about our last job or our future projects or what we’re doing at the moment. But I love the fact that we’re now on a stage where people read interviews with us because of the jobs that we do and the fact that that might turn people on to different ideas…[make them] think about things. Instead of just reading about Dom Monaghan who plays a Hobbit in The Lord of The Rings, you’ll read three–quarters of that, and then I’ll talk about issues that I believe are important or things that I’d like to get across to people. That’s something that I really I’m in – that hopefully you can inspire people to talk and spread ideas.

Are there other issues you’d like to talk about in this interview?
The times we’re living in at the moment are a little bit crazy. [When I] talk to people that I admire and respect – Billy, Elijah, Viggo, my mum and dad, any people whose opinion I look to and listen to – those people are talking about getting happy and living a good life. For a long time, I had a fridge magnet that said, “ Get happy.” It was a huge thing about my life. You wake up, and you do everything that you can to just try and get happy that day. I think I’m generally a quite a positive, happy person, but everyone has those days where they feel kind of ****ty, and they don’t want to do anything. I’m not that interested in [being with] people who dwell on their problems or get down on themselves. You just need to pick yourself up. It’s not up to anyone else to help you out; you can do anything you want to change that. I think that when I feel happy, and my life is going well, I’m much more able to respond to people and give good advice.

One last question: Can you recall any particularly bizarre or funny things that happened while you were in New Zealand, either on or off set?
One of the most unusual days was on Mount Cook. We were flying up on a helicopter to the summit. We would get called in at about 5:00 in the morning, and we’d get in our Hobbit feet, we’d get in our costumes, and then we’d be picked up in a helicopter. For a couple of days, I kind of felt like Phil Collins when he did Live Act and flew to Detroit in a private jet and then got in a helicopter and landed in the stadium and all that. We’d jump in the back of a helicopter, the rotors would start going, and we’d take off for like 20 minutes. The journey was the most incredible thing you can imagine, flying really close to the cliffs and into places that maybe fewer than 20 people in the world have ever been. It was Elijah, Billy, and me in the helicopter with Sean Astin, and [the three of us] were trying to get the helicopter pilot to bank to the left and bank to the right…We asked him if we could do a complete flip, and he was like “ No, all the [kit] will fall all over the place”, and Sean Astin was saying, ”Don’t do anything – just keep going straight!” He was Mr. Safety. So we were [giving Sean a hard time about] that! The pilot would get us on top of the mountain, and we’d be up there all day. There would be some of the most incredible, clean, crisp air. Then, at lunchtime, the helicopter would come up with a big box of food. We would just sit by this big mountain lake, and it was perfectly, perfectly silent, apart from us guys chatting to each other, eating beautiful food, and looking out on the view. I remember Billy saying to me, “This is incredible! What a day! [You’re] with your best mates, hanging out with the cast from The Lord of the Rings…you’re on top of an incredible mountain with no one around you, and this is your life. You’re getting paid for it.” It was a crystal clear thought; ”This is it. This is a real peak in my life. This is a moment of complete happiness.” I can define that as pure joy…realizing for a split second that you’re doing something that you absolutely love, and you are so lucky. Those kind of days are really bizarre, because you don’t tend to live like that.


On the flip side of that, it is utterly bizarre to get out of a car in Leicester Square – for the past eight or nine years I’ve been coming down to London for auditions and going to Leicester Square to catch a quick movie and get a train – on the night of a premiere, and there are 5.000 people all screaming! But you just have fun with it. My favourite band of all time is the Beatles, and whenever you see [footage of] the Beatles in a crowd situation where people are screaming their names, they never look like they’re used to it. They always look excited; they’re always laughing and waving. That’s exactly how I – and the rest of the cast – feel. It’s great fun, and you sort of pinch yourself. Certainly, talking with Billy and Elijah and Sean Astin and Orlando, you realize this is a passing thing. You go over and chat to people immediately, and you disarm them. So instead of them thinking about you as Dom the famous Hobbit, Dom the guy in the film, you’re like, “ Hey, mate, how are you doing? What’s your name? I just love the fact that you can break through that myth.


Billy and I actually took a little bit of time off on the night of the Oscars to go to the [fan organized] party, because we missed it last year. We were in a crowd of 3.000 people, I think, and the love in that room…everybody just really respects what you do, and they really love you. And we really love them, because they’re fans of the movies. It just feels great to have a relationship, and anytime we get the chance to spend time with the fans, we do, because we realize how personal the journey through the trilogy is for them and also for us.