An extraordinary hobbit

The Lord of the Rings stars are in Wellington for The Return of the King premiere tomorrow. CATHY ARONSON talks to Sean Astin, the actor who plays hobbit Samwise Gamgee, loyal friend of the ring bearer Frodo.


How are you?

Better now I think. It's been stressful leading up to five years' worth of mental concentration on this moment in time so the week leading up to it, there has been a lot of anxiety, needless anxiety because there's nothing that can be done about anything. Just realising how much focus and excitement there is towards the movie and not really being able to do anything else that's not the movie during this time. So it's like, you know, a kid waiting to go to the high school prom or the high school sporting match and a couple of days before you're thinking about it.

And now you're here.

Now I'm here, it's amazing. It's amazing how much this country has embraced the films. I'm afraid people are going to get sick of it. You've been with it, it's everywhere, it's all over the place and I keep thinking, but it's finite, tomorrow there's a premiere and then on to other things. So it's got its own natural life cycle.

Have you seen the final movie?

Yes we saw it yesterday

What do you think of the final cut?

It was overwhelming. I'm really looking forward to seeing it with an audience. The making of the movie was such a comprehensive experience and there were so many facets to the making of the film that somehow the goal of having a three-hour narrative representation of everything that went into it almost doesn't seem to do the effort justice. So there is probably a five-hour version of the movie that's just as good as the three-hour 10-minute version, so my first time seeing the final version of it I was seeing all the things that had been cut out. And it's a little hard to enjoy the film and give yourself over to the movie when you sort of think 'is that going or is that coming up or gosh is that going to be cut out?' so I was in analytical mode when I was watching it so I can't wait to be in the Embassy tomorrow night and be watching it with people who really want to be there and allow the natural ebb and flow of the audience reaction to the film to help me drown out the white noise in my own brain that gets in the way.

The media watched a preview yesterday and there were a lot of teary eyes.

I watched it with my wife and she was crying. That's good I suppose.

You obviously put a lot of emotion into it. Where did you draw your emotion from?

I think knowing the level of quality and craftsmanship and excellence that Peter was committed to from people of world class calibre work in their fields. I didn't want to be a weak link so every time we did one of those scenes, and there's probably six of them in the movie but we did about 50 of them, the writing was on the page, what you were supposed to do was on the page, Peter would emotionally set the cross bar and you had to get over it. There was no not going there. It wasn't like I thought about people I had known who had died.

There was one period of time during the film where I would think of songs that are evocative to me of my daughter. Being a new father back when we first starting making the film there was a lot of emotional stuff that happens when you become a father, especially for me because I was so young, so I drew on that a little bit.

But mostly it was just the ideas of the character and what it was that was being represented. Ideas are very powerful so I would really rely on that, the idea of being rejected by someone you're so committed to is such a painful idea, that just living in the space of the reality of the movie itself was what I did.

You know I wasn't always good. Peter had no qualms about saying 'I didn't believe that' or 'you need to do more'.

In film I find my instinct is to always go more subtle because if you allow the camera to get close to you, very little nuances that happen in the way you're thinking or feeling can be picked up on. And I think it actually gets people leaning forward and emotionally drawn into it, rather than leaning back because you're exploding off the screen with your performance.

A lot of times one of the traps that can happen is you think you're feeling things and you are really genuinely feeling things but somehow it doesn't come across. Peter is extraordinary because he uses the camera really to find the moment and it's almost like this interesting emotional surgery that's happening between where he's putting the camera. He'll walk around you and show you where the lens is going to be relative to your face and you start to realise 'ok if the camera is coming in here I'll use that to decide how to craft the emotionality of this moment' and Peter had no problem with saying 'you might be feeling it but I'm not and that's a problem'.

And then you just have to think 'am I going to walk away from this moment being the guy who didn't deliver?' and the answer always had to be 'no'.

Was it emotionally draining?

Exhausting, the bizarrest thing I've ever done in my life.

Cry, then cut, do it again?

Well, the way Peter worked on this film the actual physical film was the cheapest resource going, so there were a lot of takes. So it wasn't like doing a movie with a particular budget where you do two or three takes,you have to nail and then move on.

This was more like 'we're in this emotional moment and we're going to start peeling away the layers and we're gonna keep peeling it away until we get there and then were gonna rub that thing until it's just raw and bloody and there's no more and you're spent.

So we'd done fifteen takes after we'd done fifteen takes of great stuff, and you realise it's not getting any better because you can't put the genie back in the box. It's an amazing way to work because what you found is that there are levels of emotionality that I couldn't have conceptualised achieving that depth of sadness or pathos in any other way.

Other actors can, some actors have incredible training and have a reservoir of emotion, but I'm genuinely a happy guy and my life's been pretty good compared to most people so it's hard for me to accept in so far as I'm trying to honour people who have those experience and be honest.

The process you've just described, was that a new way of acting for you?

I think it's new for anybody in film, except for maybe the European film makers in the 70s who were doing experiential cinema. I think it's unprecedented -- that's not how movies get made because it's too expensive.

But because of the way that Peter set up the game by owning the post-production facilities and special effects houses, by creating this environment and this space, which is his playground, he was able to design a process that allowed for that. It's pretty special.

Did it change you as an actor?

Completely, it's ruined me for everything else I ever do. Or maybe it's prepared me for everything else. It's certainly ruined me as a director because I can't imagine being able to create, at least maybe not for 20 years, what Peter's been able to create for himself. When you see the kind of freedom that he works to create for himself it's pretty enviable.

So, where to now?

I have no idea. It's a new moment for me.

You haven't finished with Lord of the Rings yet?

I've spent all year working, I've done thirteen episodes of another television series, I've directed an episode of another show, I acted in another movie and I just finished a movie in South Africa. But somehow all of those seemed like momentary hiatuses from this kind of moment with The Lord of the Rings. So January and February will be a whole new time for me where I have to really look at my life and figure out what the hell I'm going to do with myself.



* It's a Lord of the Rings weekend at nzherald.co.nz. Join us throughout this weekend for updates from Wellington as the city prepares to host Monday's world premiere of Part 3 in the Rings trilogy: The Return of the King.

Herald Feature: Lord of the Rings

Related links