| One afternoon, we go to Los Angeles' huge new record store, Amoeba. Wood works his way through the racks, raving about the Hives, Andy Votel, Buffalo Daughter, the Sea and Cake, Beulah, Broadcast and, incongruously, Heart's "Dreamboat Annie" - and then a man approaches. It is his friend Ben, who works here. "Whassup?" screams Wood, and they fall into a rambunctious combination of hugging and wrestling in which Ben lifts Wood off the ground. "You've had a big fucking month - congratulations," Ben says, and they're off, debating whether Amelie is better than The Royal Tenenbaums (Ben's view) or vice versa (Wood's view) and discussing the brilliance of the masturbation shot in Mulholland Drive. Ben ushers him to the DVD section, where Wood gets the Twin Peaks TV pilot, and they arrange for Ben to come over and watch it. Before leaving the store, Wood looks through the Smashing Pumpkins section, knowing that there can be nothing here he does not already have, but that's what you do with your favorite artist. "Always," he says. "Always. It's silly." Wood had two uncomfortable scenes to film for The Ice Storm, Ang Lee's 1997 film about wife-swapping in Seventies suburbia. Because the second of these, in which he fumbles sexually with Christina Ricci, who is wearing a Nixon mask, was filmed on an interior set, his mother wasn't directly standing there, watching. During the first, in which he and Ricci kiss experimentally at the deep end of a dry swimming pool, his mom was right there. "That was awkward," he reflects. "At the time I wasn't exactly comfortable with any kind of sexuality around my mom. It wasn't just a kissing scene, it was highly clinical. You know, tongues and mouths." Afterward, he remembers, she said to him, "That was really weird." And he realized that it was probably more awkward for her in the long run. One afternoon I ask him: How many times have you been in love? "Oh, fuck me," he says, startled. He puts on a raw British accent: "Jesus Christ." Then, in his own voice, he begins to address the question: "I was in love, you know what, once, but it was that kind of young, fresh, puppy-love thing that you get when you're like sixteen. It was this girl named Sarah. She used to come to my house at five o'clock in the morning, and we'd just hold each other on the couch for like twenty minutes and then she'd go off to school." What went wrong? "We were both young. In all honesty it was more about - the breakup was more about her needing me, and I didn't want to be with someone that needed me. It was really hard to, you know, basically be someone's happiness, and be responsible for that. . . ." Are you currently attached? "Completely unattached. I miss it. Really miss it. You know, it's dangerous, because I'm terribly romantic... I used to get myself into these relationships that were more about my idealization of love than the fact that I'm really in love with them. However, it's wonderful being single. It's always in flux. I'm looking but I'm not looking." Wood still lives at home, though in a separate guesthouse. "I spend all my time in the house anyway," he says. He's very close to his mother and siblings. (Zachariah produces video games in San Diego and generally comes home every second weekend; Hannah, 18, is planning to move to New York - "she writes poetry," Elijah says.) His mother used to accompany him to every set and guide his career, but though these days she still reads his scripts and offers opinions, there has been a separation. I ask him how this is playing itself out, and he laughs. "Better now," he says. "It's not only me getting older but me also taking control of something she really loved as well." There is another weirdness that often comes with precocious success: perpetuated money for the family. "That's a difficult thing to accept. I don't want to consider myself the breadwinner. It takes away the power and responsibility of my mother and the cohesive sense of family I have." I have a different question. Does she do your laundry? "She does, still. Isn't that terrible? I'm twenty-one, and, yeah... pathetic." The last time we meet, Wood says he is a little worried about having spoken about his father. "I just don't want to upset the waters any more than they are already," says Wood. Before Christmas, his father had left a message complaining that his ex-wife had said she would get Elijah to call, and he hadn't called. Elijah is annoyed that in his message his father had said of his other children, "And if anybody else is around I'll talk to them too." "It was so revealing," says Wood, "and it bugs me." I ask him: In what ways are you most like your mother? "I share quite a bit of anxiety with my mom. I have a lot of anxiety. My mom and my sister actually are most alike. They have quite fiery personalities, so when they get angry at each other it's like an explosion. Whereas I try to talk things out. I was always the family peacemaker." We are in the outside seating area in front of a juice bar near the Pacific. A woman comes up. She isn't after an autograph. "I don't mean to interrupt you guys, but . . ." she sweetly begins, and tells us that the van behind us has a man with a camera in it, photographing Wood. "Thank you," says Wood, and we walk off. "Isn't that terrible?" he says. "There are little references here and there - nothing overwhelming - that my life is changing. That never would have happened before." Elijah Wood has the ring. There were other rings, used for different shots, but he has the ring he wore: the ring that was the ring. Jackson gave it to him in a wooden box as he left New Zealand at the end of filming. "It is the one ring," he says, "which is a pretty great thing to have." He keeps the ring in his office. It's put away, out of sight. I ask Wood whether he often takes it out and fondles it. "No," he says. "I haven't taken it out in quite some time. I'd rather just keep it hidden away for now." He has the ring. He mentions that he also wants the sword, but they still need that for pickup shots. Elijah Wood is talented and successful and desired and strangely secret and smart and self-possessed. He has the ring, and now he wants the sword. That's how it starts. Wood may handle it all better than most, whatever his buried weirdnesses, but there will be plenty to handle nonetheless. He will get his sword, of course, and he will keep the ring, which in fact is nothing sinister or malevolent, just a gold band from a beloved movie. And then, because this is how we are, he will want something else. CHRIS HEATH |
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