There and Back Again

by Sean Astin

  “You should be better off-screen than you are on-screen, do you understand me?” she admonished. “That’s your responsibility to your fellow performer.”

  She taught me at that moment that you give just as much, if not more, when you’re off-camera, and to this day I’m always better off camera than on. I don’t know why, whether it’s because I don’t have to worry about how I look, or whether it’s just a point of pride. I do know that something happens on camera; if you’re sophisticated and aware of the camera, you want to be good at that and lose yourself in the part. It’s highly egocentric. When you’re not on camera, and you really emote and play the part, it’s just the opposite: it’s all about the other actor. The degree to which you are willing to open an emotional vein in support of the other actor is directly related to the amount of respect you have for him or her. I felt like I needed to be there for Andy, to honor the energy he emitted—and by the way, it was a level of intensity that was about five thousand degrees hotter than anything I’d ever experienced. White hot. I don’t doubt for a second that Andy’s strength and focus, his seriousness of purpose, improved the performances of everyone who worked with him.

  I hear people talk about intensity all the time within the context of sports. There are very few athletes capable of peak intensity every day. Some days, it just isn’t there. They’re still professional, they still do the work, but they’re just not quite as intense. Well, it’s the same thing in acting. There were days when Elijah and I—I point to him only because I did just about every scene with him, and we both did an enormous amount of work with Andy—lacked intensity. Not merely because of the extended length of the production, but also because of the way our characters were approached, the way certain shots were designed. It was clear that we were doing a lot more work than would end up on the screen, and even though we wanted to do our utmost for Peter and the movie, it was impossible not to slow down and take a deep breath once in a while.

  When Andy showed up, though, it was like, Holy shit! Who is this guy? Peter, in particular, wanted to reward Andy for his commitment, for his unflagging approach to the character of Gollum. Unlike Ian McKellen, who was so clever in his ability to encourage Fran and Peter and Philippa to bend the story based on his ideas, and unlike Viggo, who would just engage in creative trench warfare by continually coming at them with suggestions until he whittled them down, Andy was the sturdiest and most loyal of soldiers. He was willing to do whatever was asked of him, so long as everyone understood that he was not just providing the voice of Gollum. He was a real actor. He was an artist.

  Fran loved writing for Andy, especially the schizophrenic stuff, and Peter liked having fun with that. He liked it for all the reasons the audience likes it: the arguing back and forth, the humor and the pathos. But it didn’t come easily to Andy, regardless of how effortless it might appear to be on the screen. He suffered perhaps more than anyone else on the film (with the possible exception of John Rhys-Davies), and he did so willingly. I think Peter loved that about Andy, and I can’t say that I blame him. Billy Boyd and Andy Serkis have something in common: they’re both serious actors, and they’re both really happy practicing their craft. There is something unique about the way they approach acting—and their lives. There is a selflessness about them that I envy. Andy is honest about when he’s feeling competitive, or when he needs to assert himself. He’s never sneaky or underhanded, and he’s thoroughly devoted to doing the best work he can possibly do, and to helping everyone else rise to the occasion.

  Billy has a similar attitude and drive, although it feels different to be around him, probably because he’s slightly less intense, at least on the outside. In both cases, though, there is an admirable and palpable commitment to acting, and it was clear that Peter liked and respected it (as almost any director would), and wanted them to shine in the movie because of it. I think Peter recognized my talent and honestly knew that I wanted to do well, but I also think my level of awareness about how movies are made and the politics behind the making of movies prompted him to view me in a different light. That’s a roundabout way of saying that at times I was a pain in the ass, which isn’t quite as worthy a thing to honor.

  My two favorite characters, as written by Tolkien, are Treebeard and Gollum; in the movies, they’re showy parts that provide almost limitless options. But to be the other guy in the scenes with those characters, well, that’s a challenge, too. When Fran and Philippa started writing for the complexity of the emotional triangle between Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, when they started fleshing that out, it felt good. But sometimes we’d do scenes that were basically excuses for Gollum to perform a monologue, and that required patience on the part of the other actors. Most of the time I didn’t mind, and in fact wanted to do whatever I could to assist Andy, to make his seemingly thankless on-set task easier. I must admit, however, that there were other times, when I was feeling downtrodden and underappreciated (and fat, too, really fat, which exacerbated my mood swings) because my character was getting short shrift, that I suffered from a dose of Gollum envy.

  There is, for example, a scene in The Two Towers in which Gollum stops Sam and Frodo as they’re about to try to sneak through the Black Gates of Mordor and says, “There’s a better way. We’ll take the stairs.”

  Well, Andy is a strong guy, and he’s also a littler bigger than I am, so when we’d do fight scenes it wasn’t unusual for him to inflict actual pain. Even apparently benign scenes, such as this one, held the potential for discomfort. As Andy grabbed me by the collar and pulled me back, he caught a fistful of hair and yanked my wig off. Now, this was not an easy thing to do. This was not a “hairpiece”; it was an anchored wig. The makeup artists would slick back our hair and glue the wiglace on. They’d twist the real hair on the top and in back, and tie it off with rubber bands. Then they’d put a wig on top and insert pins through the wiglace and anchor those into the rubber bands. The end result was a wig that wouldn’t move in a hurricane.

  But there I was, sitting on my fat butt in front of the stunned cast and crew, wigless and white and wounded, looking and feeling suddenly like a star from the silent-movie era (“I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille!”). What I should have done was laugh it off. I should have given Andy a pat on the back and said, “No hard feelings” or “Dude, lay off the caffeine!” I mean, it didn’t hurt that bad. It was just embarrassing. But I was tired and frustrated, so I got up and, without saying a word to anyone, walked off the set and headed for the makeup area. In truth, it was the most efficient way to get back to working, but I did walk off in a bit of a huff, which was pretty silly, considering Andy hadn’t done anything wrong. He was supposed to grab me hard; I wanted him to grab me hard. It wasn’t his fault that my wig came off, and I should have said so. I didn’t, though, and my lack of courtesy really pissed him off.

  “Sorry, man,” he snapped. “It wasn’t on purpose, you know?”

  I did know, and I told Andy as much when I returned, with a new wig and a better attitude firmly in place.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  As the production slogged along, and days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months finally gave way to years, it became apparent that we were, of course, in good hands after all. We realized that Peter had a vast sprawling image in his mind, and somehow he had the talent and ambition to transfer it to the screen in a way that would make sense to audiences, even Tolkien purists. Moreover, I began to get the feeling that the patience Peter had requested would be rewarded, and that Samwise Gamgee would have his moment (or moments) to shine.

  Not that I understood the entire story; I don’t think any of the actors, even those most familiar with the books, had a clear grasp of Peter’s adaptation. I couldn’t tell from reading the scripts how the first movie was going to end or how the second movie was going to begin, and I wasn’t terribly concerned with figuring it out; that wasn’t my job. My job was to trust Peter and Fran and Philippa, to have faith that they knew exactly where they were going
and how they were going to get there. It wasn’t until the premiere of the first film, in which a complicated story unfolded so eloquently, that I truly appreciated the depth of their genius. But there were signposts along the way.

  For example, take the Bridge of Khazad-Dum, where Gandalf fights heroically before falling to his (apparent) death, and the grieving of the Fellowship that followed. That scene felt pitch perfect even as we filmed it. We took a chopper to the top of Mount Nelson on the south island, where the view was nothing short of spectacular. Being up there in this pristine, rocky place, unaccessible to most people, felt fresh, exhilarating. It was one of those days when the work came easily, not because it wasn’t difficult, but because it just felt right. I remember nailing the crying scene, and hoping that it wouldn’t be lost in translation. And it wasn’t. A few months later Peter screened a small amount of footage for some of the cast and crew, as well as for an executive who had been invited. This wasn’t something I’d seen Peter often do, but obviously he felt pretty good about the material. With good reason. The scene was the aftermath of Khazad-Dum, and it was absolutely breathtaking. The swirling slow-motion footage captured the beauty and majesty of the setting, as well as the emotional power of the scene. I still think it’s one of the most evocative scenes in the entire trilogy, and even when viewed out of context, as it was in this case, it gave me confidence. I felt very proud of the work. For perhaps the first time since I’d been in New Zealand, I felt like I had been nurtured—encouraged to soar and allowed to flourish—and it felt permanent, unmistakable, and just plain great!

  The roller coaster continued afterward, and at times I felt adrift and frustrated, but always I knew Khazad-Dum was in the can, and that gave me strength. I only hoped there would be similar opportunities to come.

  Which there were. The first involved the ending to The Fellowship of the Ring, which depicts the splitting of the Fellowship at Amon Hen. We made several trips to the Mavora Lakes region to shoot this and other sequences. At one point John Mahaffey, the second unit director, filmed a scene in which Frodo and Sam paddle away together, only to be attacked by uruk-hai, who rise out of the water. I don’t even recall the nature of the relationship between that fight and the escape from Boromir that preceded it. I just know it was one of a couple of endings written for the first film, and that it felt a little awkward and clunky. As always seemed to happen, however, the scene was revisited and rethought and ultimately improved to an astonishing degree. There was no room for complacency on this film, no settling for just okay.

  Elijah and I were introduced to what turned out to be the final version—the definitive ending of the first film—during dinner with Peter and Fran and Philippa. They had invited us to an Italian restaurant, and although no reason was given for the meeting, I knew it had to be important; they didn’t often extend such invitations, not because they weren’t gracious or accommodating, but simply because there was far too much work to be done. If a meal was scheduled, there usually was a reason for it. On this occasion, the reason was made clear before the appetizers had even arrived, when Fran presented us with two typewritten pages on which were printed the final scene of The Fellowship of the Ring, in which Sam, loyal to the end, marches into the lake and very nearly drowns in an attempt to prevent Frodo from going off on his own.

  Fran and Philippa were justifiably proud at having figured out a moving, logical conclusion to the first film, and they wanted us to know how good they felt about it. I presume Peter also wanted us to understand that this was a critical transitional scene, one that would leave viewers eager to see the second movie, and as such it required intense focus on our part. I do know that that evening was among the highlights of the entire production for me, sitting in that restaurant, reading this beautifully rendered scene, and thinking, See, we’re all just colleagues after all; they really do care about me and want to spend time with me. Such are the insecurities and neuroses of my sometimes feeble mind, and they were easily magnified on a production of this scale. Peter and Fran and Philippa were so busy and were being pulled in so many different directions that it wasn’t unusual to go weeks on end without having a substantive conversation with them. In fairness, though, it wasn’t Peter’s job to be my friend or mentor, even if that’s what I wanted. But I remember feeling like my value as an actor was perceived as important that night. There were so many times when I lost sight of what we were doing, when it felt like we all were just grinding it out—putting on the makeup, the ears and feet—and that we were somehow disconnected from the big picture. Now, though, Sam had a purpose—I had a purpose—and it was germane to the overall project.

  This was one instance, however, when circumstances conspired to make filming the sequence a physical as well as emotional challenge. It was early in the morning, and I felt pretty good about the work ahead, maybe even a bit cocky, because I knew I’d have something important to do. Christine and Ali were with me in the dressing room, and I gave them both a quick kiss before heading out to film the scene. It wasn’t a complicated shot. Elijah would sit in a canoe, some twenty feet off the shore, and shout to me an explanation for his departure, and for leaving me behind. I would respond by telling him that I understood, while simultaneously declaring my intention to follow. The fact that Sam doesn’t know how to swim does not dissuade him in the least, and ultimately Frodo must paddle back and rescue his friend, sealing their bond for the duration of the journey: they will go together to Mordor, regardless of the consequences.

  I had taken only a few heavy steps into the water, however, when I felt a searing pain in my foot, the kind of pain that instantly signals a severe injury. If you smack your funny bone or stub your toe, it hurts, but the pain passes almost instantly. This was different. It felt as though something had gone right through my foot. The shot called for me to walk into the water and swim—or flail—out of frame, but I stopped immediately, frozen in my tracks by the pain. It hurt pretty bad for about ten seconds, and then I turned and limped out of the water and stumbled back up the beach. I was surprised by how quickly everyone seemed to realize the gravity of the situation. Of course, the blood streaming down my prosthetic foot was an indication that something bad had happened. I’d been stabbed, as it turned out, probably by a branch or a shard of glass, although I can’t be sure of that, since we never found the offending object. The likely scenario is that when the crew prepared the lake for this scene, they ran a rake along the bottom to smooth things out and make sure nothing was there. Unfortunately, they might have churned something up that had been buried. Also, I was putting such force into the way I was marching into the water, while wearing just my hobbit feet, that anything with a sharp tip was going to do some damage.

  I discovered on this day that you can determine the severity of an injury by looking at the faces of the people around you. If it’s really bad, they squint or scrunch up their faces, or even turn away in revulsion. That’s the reaction my wound seemed to provoke. Not from everyone, mind you. Elijah walked over as one of the emergency medical technicians was cutting off my prosthetic foot, an act that dislodged a huge blood clot, which landed on the ground with a splat! This naturally disgusted most everyone in proximity, with the possible exception of Elijah, who simply said, “Cool!” and then began poking at the blood clot with a stick, an act that disgusted even Peter Jackson, whose background in splatter films ought to make him immune to such things.

  “Come on, Elijah. Don’t do that!” he admonished.

  “No, that’s okay,” I said. “He can play with my blood clot.”

  Elijah just laughed. On some level, I think, I enjoyed the attention, especially once the pain began to subside. But it was a bit of a carnival atmosphere. The DVD crew was shooting close-ups, and everyone was gathering around, and it was becoming clear that while this wasn’t a life-threatening injury or anything, it was going to be a major inconvenience.

  “Oh, yes, it’s bleeding quite freely now,” the medic said as he dressed the wound.
/>   Freely …

  Not a word you want to hear associated with your own blood. To me that meant, Whoa, I’m losing a lot of blood. But that’s not what he meant. He was referring to the fact that it was a clean, empty wound, that dirt was going out with the blood, which was a good thing. Relatively speaking.

  Everything happened pretty quickly after that. Ali and Christine showed up, and the three of us were flown by helicopter to a small hospital. Christine doesn’t like helicopters, so she sat in the back. Ali was up front with me and the pilot. She was only four years old, so she naturally looked to me to see whether she should be afraid.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’ll be fun.”

  Ali smiled. Meanwhile, in the back, as the chopper left the ground, Christine closed her eyes and turned a little green. The pilot, I had been told, once worked with Jacques Cousteau, flying in and out of some of the most remote locations in the world, so I figured he had to be pretty good. And he was. The flight was bumpy but uneventful.

  Ali wanted to stay with me while the doctor treated my injury. As he pulled out a syringe filled with novocaine, I wondered if I had made a mistake.

  “Oh, Daddy,” Ali said sympathetically, “that’s a big needle!”

  So it was. But I was determined to look like a tough guy for my daughter, so I swallowed hard and held my breath as the doctor inserted the needle.

  There was a brief rush of pain, followed by numbness, and then it was a party. That night, of course, after the novocaine wore off, the pain returned, but some of the cast and crew got together for dinner, and I made a point of joining them, mainly because I didn’t want to be regarded as a guy who was laid up. I wanted to be heroic like Sam!

  The very next day I returned to work, although on a completely different scene in a completely different location (a few weeks would pass before we returned to the Mavora Lakes region to film the conclusion of the first film). At the end of the workday, Peter presented me with a Maori walking stick.