Just turned twenty-one, this hobbit hero is a fool for love, tattoos and much more
His world can seem vicious and unkind, but who could expect Elijah Wood to notice? At lunch at the Newsroom Cafe in Los Angeles, Wood is spotted by Chris Rock, who is on a cell phone. Without ending his phone conversation, Rock - whom Wood has not met - exclaims, "You're a fucking star! A killer!"
Wood is suffering the widespread reaction to his heroic role as the diminutive, furry-footed hobbit Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring, the first part of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which so far has grossed more than $700 million worldwide and gathered thirteen Oscar nominations, the most this year. Wood has already filmed the two other parts of the Rings trilogy, for release in December and in 2003, so there's more attention ahead. "People come up to me," Wood says, "and that's all they want to say: 'Thank you.' "I soon see it for myself. The waitress first brings the check, then removes it. "We all decided that we liked the movie so much that it's on us," she insists.
Once Wood has eaten lunch, we move to another table, where the twenty-one-year-old star is allowed to smoke his Sampoerna clove cigarettes. This is a habit he picked up from Josh Hartnett, who smoked them on the set of The Faculty, the teen horror movie they made in 1998. Wood had never been drawn to cigarettes, but he liked this new smell. He held out until they met to promote the film. "Josh was, 'Come on, dude, you've been wanting one for ages.' So I had one and it just escalated into a full-fledged addiction."
Wood arrived home from New Zealand, where director Peter Jackson filmed the trilogy over sixteen months, on December 23rd, 2000. Since then, aside from a quick eight days playing Edward Burns' murderer brother in the upcoming Ash Wednesday and re-recording dialogue for Rings, he has unwound and waited. Wood had a long career as a child actor, from Forever Young to Flipper, and though for the most part he avoided the cheesiest and most limiting options, he has been looking forward to his chance to be an adult. "Teenagers tend to get pigeon-holed into teen films," he says. Wood is pleased about the next two chapters of Rings. In these, the story - and Frodo in particular - grows progressively darker. It was suggested to Wood during the filming of Fellowship that the lure of the ring, which confers a power that insidiously corrupts, was akin to heroin addiction. He found that useful, but suggests the ring's grip may be tighter: "It's an obsession as well as an addiction."
Wood has a few loose criteria he wants to apply to his next project. "Something modern would be nice," he says. He unfolds his thin, broad smile. "No prosthetic makeup would be good as well." (This just in: Wood will get his wish by co-starring with Mandy Moore in the college comic romance Try Seventeen.)
During the time its cast members spent making the Rings trilogy, they entered a parallel world. "As the airplanes landed in New Zealand, it was like Dorothy's house landing in Oz," says Sean Astin, who plays Frodo's hobbit friend Sam. Wood agrees. Trying to tell me what fun he and his co-stars had, Wood says, as though it were the most normal thing to say, "Hobbits know how to have a good time."
You all lost your minds, didn't you?
"Yes," he says. "Well, we referred to each other as hobbits [Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan joined Wood and Astin in the hobbit fraternity] and still do. But lost our mind in a good way. We gave in to the world of The Lord of the Rings and Middle Earth. It was about brilliant friendship and a closeness."
The closeness among the nine actors who made up The Fellowship of The Ring - four hobbits, two human warriors (Viggo Mortensen and Sean Bean), a dwarf (John Rhys-Davies), an archer elf (Orlando Bloom) and the wizard Gandalf (Sir Ian McKellen) - took bizarre forms. Wood explains that a feature of life on the Rings set was an increase in word power inspired by an obsession with uncouth British humor. "I've gained an appreciation of the word cunt," he explains. "Negative words - the best thing is to diffuse them by using and taking the meaning away. Cunt! Cunt! It's a great, great word. Very forceful."
It was not Wood but Viggo Mortensen who was the most obsessed. "He became utterly fascinated with it," says Wood, "and it became the word of the film. Their Winnebago for makeup was called the Cuntebago. I was not a part of the Cuntebago unfortunately - it was the makeup room of Orlando, Viggo and Sean Bean - but it was a lovely place to visit. Cuntebago T-shirts were made up. There was a Cunty Christmas and we had a Cunty Christmas tree, all this stuff. Cate Blanchett [who plays the elf queen Galadriel] was deemed Her Cuntliness."
And Cate was fine with this?
He nods. "It was an honor."
Um, did Sir Ian join in all of this?
"No, he didn't, come to mind."
"I didn't get involved in all that," confirms McKellen, though not unamused. "They were quite distinctive, the hobbits. They fell in with each other's sense of humor." Likewise, director Jackson comments that "if it helps them get through the film then it's fine by me." Wood says that his Cuntebago T-shirt is home in a drawer. "It's too big for me," he explains. "I'm a small guy."
Mostly, what one hears from those who shared his company in New Zealand are testaments to Wood's maturity. It is Wood who describes a rare exception to this - a night out in Wellington drinking vodka and cranberry juice that ended with Wood and fellow hobbit Dominic Monaghan climbing up a fountain statue that had been annoying Wood and pissing in it as Liv Tyler, cast as Arwen the elf princess, looked on and said (Wood does a high-pitched Tyler impression), "Guys, what are you doing? Did you just piss in the fountain?" He enjoys this story. "Funny though," he says. "Good memories."
Famously, the actors' bond was cemented when they all got tattoos showing the number nine written in Elvish. Roger's Tattoo Parlour in Wellington opened specially for them one Sunday morning. Wood opted for a spot just below his waistline on the right. "I certainly held his hand while he was having his tattoo done," McKellen recalls. "Not that he was not feeling brave, but we were all chums down there."
Now, more than a year later, Wood is considering another Lord of the Rings tattoo. In the first movie, Frodo is stabbed above the heart, a wound that never truly heals. Wood wants to get that wound inscribed onto his chest, just a simple black line or a white scar on his flesh to mark where the blade entered and the injury remained. "It would be a really brilliant personal Frodo tattoo to have," he says. "That little scar that would never go away."
