Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Studio execs were like, ''Lord of the Rings!' People want to see sword-and-dragon-type things!' No, people just want to see great stories. Hollywood always takes the wrong lesson from successes.
'Doctor Who' is not as literary as 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' is - books have come out, but they are from the television episodes. So there is that difference... it's more scholastic.
I'm proud of Lord of the Rings. I think it's a once in a lifetime role, and a once in a lifetime film. It was made with so much care and passion and meticulous detail and everybody was so behind it.
After 'The Fellowship of the Ring,' the films that followed it, instead of having their own unique aesthetic, they all wanted to be 'Lord of the Rings' as opposed to learning from 'Lord of the Rings.'
Everyone was very deeply involved in the world of 'The Lord of the Rings'. From the wardrobe department to lighting, all were fascinated with the story. This is something that does not happen usually.
'Lord Of The Rings' fandom was massive, worldwide, entrenched. Generally it had been part of the fans' life all their life, because they had it read to them as children; they'd become Tolkien students.
When I first did 'The Lord of the Rings,' I was acting on the set with the other actors, but then I had to go back and repeat the process on my own to do the physical capture on a motion capture stage.
Asking the director of 'The Lord of the Rings' to read my novel was exactly as terrifying as you'd think. I came this close to not doing it because I was so embarrassed. But he was so gracious about it.
As a child I read all kinds of stuff, whether it was 'Asterix and Obelix' and 'Tin Tin' comic books, or 'Lord of the Rings,' or Frank Herbert's sci-fi. Or 'The Wind in the Willows.' Or 'Charlotte's Web.'
When you see 'Lord of the Rings,' you want to feel like you've been dropped into it and that you're part of it. You don't want to be aware of how it's being done; you just want it to feel really seamless.
Other than Peter Jackson doing 'Lord of the Rings,' I don't get it when filmmakers follow up a movie with a sequel to the same movie. God bless 'em if they can be up for it, but that would drive me insane.
The approach of 'Game of Thrones' is similar to 'The Lord of the Rings' in that it treats its source material almost like history, and it focuses as much on the human drama as it does on anything fantastical.
I loved 'Pan's Labyrinth.' It transported me into another world. I like fantasy worlds; I love 'Lord of the Rings' as well, for that reason, because you really get to get out of reality and go somewhere else.
Maybe by his second year in Hogwarts, Harry Potter will learn the trick to making a movie this good, but don't bet on it. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is one of the best films of the year.
I auditioned for 'The Lord of the Rings,' I auditioned for the part of Sam, and I didn't get very far… they wanted people that were taller and alter them in Computer Generated Images, so I never got a call back.
I still think 'The Lord of the Rings' is the greatest literary achievement in my lifetime. Like so many other people, I couldn't wait for the second and then the third book. Nothing like it had ever been written.
I'd never heard of the 'Lord of the Rings', actually. So I went to the bookstore and there it was, three shelves of books about Tolkien and Middle-earth, and I was like, 'Holy cow, what else am I missing out on?'
It's an interesting but useless bit of information that every single character in 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' wears a wig, and many of them wears a prosthetic - false ears, feet, hands. In my case, nose.
My first score for 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy, 'The Fellowship of the Ring,' was the beginning of my journey into the world of Tolkien, and I will always hold a special fondness for the music and the experience.
'Lord of the Rings' was my jam. I was so depressed when I realized that I couldn't live in Middle-earth. And I was so sad when I was eleven and didn't get a letter from Hogwarts saying that I was going to be a wizard!
Dune is the bestselling science fiction book of all time. It's something you really need to read in your lifetime. If you're going to read The Lord of the Rings, which everyone should, then you have to read Dune, too.
Consensus wisdom has it that all modern commercial fantasy novels fall into two camps: those derived from J.R.R. Tolkien and those derived from Mervyn Peake. The 'Lord of the Rings' template or the 'Gormenghast' mold.
I have a great deal of sympathy for reluctant readers because I was one. I would do anything to avoid reading. In my case, it wasn't until I was 13 and discovered the 'Lord of the Rings' that I learned to love reading.
I read 'The Hobbit' when I was twenty and first reading modern science fiction and fantasy. I followed it up with 'The Lord of the Rings,' which I still reread from time to time, but of the lot of it, I prefer 'The Hobbit.'
One thing I've realized is that being a nerd has transformed. I like that it's easier to read comic books and, like, 'Lord of the Rings' now. You don't have to get punched in the chest in the gym locker room for that anymore.
Originally when I went off to work on 'The Lord of The Rings' I got a call from my agent saying that I was just going to do a voice. But I couldn't really approach it like that. To get Gollum's voice I had to play the character.
'The Lord of the Rings,' obviously, had a huge, huge impact on me. I read a lot of 'Hardy Boys,' also. I liked the equation, that it was always the same but a little bit different. There's something comforting about those books.
I think even back as far as 'Lord of the Rings,' there was always the chance that 'The Hobbit' would be made, even way back then. Of course at that point, Peter Jackson didn't probably think at that point that he'd be directing it.
I feel like I'm close to all the 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Goonies' people, but I'm kind of sequestered with my wife and kids. But as soon as there's some reason for all of us to be together, it's like no time has passed, lots of hugs.
When we shot 'The Lord of the Rings,' we had special permission to film in wild areas of New Zealand that could be accessed only by helicopter. They would drop us off and we would work all day, and they'd pick us up and take us out again.
I loved 'Star Wars' as a kid, but I missed out on the experiences of seeing them for the first time. It was before my time, and 'Lord of the Rings,' that trilogy felt like something similar to what 'Star Wars' was for previous generations.
My very, very first moment on set on 'Lord of the Rings' in 2000 was me in a lycra suit, six and a half thousand feet up on a mountain in New Zealand, standing in front of 250 crew who were all wondering what I was doing - myself included.
Our daughter's name Arwynn comes from Arwen in 'Lord of the Rings' because my wife and I met for the first time in the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford where J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis used to go to read out their stories to one another.
'The Lord of the Rings,' published in the mid-1950s, was intended as a prehistory to our own world. It was perceived by Tolkien to be a small but significant episode in a vast alternate mythology constructed entirely out of his own imagination.
Did you happen to catch the film I did between 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Kong?' It was a nice little Jennifer Garner comedy, '13 Going on 30,' and I play her boss. In my big scene, I get to moonwalk - pretty well, I thought - to Michael Jackson.
There was a combination of not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, but also really not wanting to be stuck in Lord of the Rings for the rest of my life, and being desperate to kind of make sure that I could do something else with my life.
I read 'the Hobbit' at the age when you're supposed to read it. I didn't read 'The Lord Of The Rings.' My father, who was an English teacher, advised me that once I had read 'the Hobbit,' that would be enough. I could then move on to Dostoyevsky.
One of my biggest disappointments is watching the trailer for the second 'Lord of the Rings' film and having Gandalf in it. Why? You know, he died in the first one, why give it away in the trailer just to try and sell a thousand more seats? It's daft.
There were two movies that asked me to go to Australia or New Zealand for long periods of time. One was 'Lord of the Rings' and one was 'The Matrix.' But I was actively involved at that time raising my family, and I couldn't really take that time out.
I looked long and hard at third films in series to see if there were any good ones that I could learn from. And there weren't any that hadn't just gone off the train tracks by their third film. Until, that is, I got to the third 'Lord of the Rings' film.
When Peter Jackson made the 'Lord of the Rings' movies, I remember there was a concern that people who didn't read Tolkien wouldn't go see the first one. But the films were so good in their own right that the audience grew beyond the readership of the book.
Orlando's a really cool guy. They hired him for 'Lord of the Rings' out of drama school. He's very new at this still and doesn't have a lot of experience. So we were in this together and we've tried to help each other out. We felt very equal which was good.
Orlando is such a kind person. He's so generous and one of us, 'us' meaning a theater person. What a lot of people don't know about him is that, before 'Lord of the Rings,' he went to theater school like a lot of us. He is just really sweet and hard working.
Iwas not a reader at all, not until I discovered 'The Hobbit.' That changed my life. It gave me the courage to read. It led me to the 'Lord of the Rings' series. And once I'd read that, I knew I could read anything because I had just read thousands of pages.
I actually watched 'Lord of the Rings' right when it came out, so maybe 2001 or 2002 or whenever that was. But I watched those movies, and I ended up loving them so much that I found every behind-the-scenes feature and every sort of 'making-of' clip they had.
I first read 'The Lord of the Rings' as an adolescent. It's a dense novel, a sprawling, complex monster of a book populated with a prolific number of characters caught up in a narrative structure that, frankly, does not lend itself to conventional storytelling.
'Jurassic Park' and 'Star Wars' shoved me into loving sci-fi and film in general when I was a barely coherent 3-year-old. And 'Lord of the Rings' took me to another planet entirely. Before that series, I knew I loved writing, but after, I knew that I had to write.
Premieres are pretty fun, but probably the most fun was when I went to see 'The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,' and I'd just flown in from Africa, and I hadn't even seen the movie yet. So, the first time I saw it was at the premiere. It was really fun.
What Peter Jackson proved with 'Lord Of The Rings' movies is that you could make various changes, and you could pull things around, but as long as it was in the spirit of the storytelling, and because he made The Shire so real, the fans forgave him for the changes.
Lord of the Rings was something I always wanted to do. I read the book when I was about 25, and I was always hoping if it was ever made into a feature film that I would be involved in some way. And then I finally got it, and I was over the moon. It was fantastic news.