Elijah Wood recalls making his audition tape for Lord of the Rings. Wood made his film debut in 1989 with a brief role in Back to the Future II and later gained recognition as a child actor in early '90s films like Radio Flyer, Forever Young, and The Adventurers of Huck Finn. One of his biggest roles as a teenager came in the 1998 disaster film, Deep Impact, before landing the role of a lifetime as Frodo Baggins in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Based on J.R.R. Tolkien's high fantasy epic of the same name, Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies went on to become one of the most successful cinematic trilogies of all time, with each installment more successful than the last, grossing nearly $3 billion at the box office combined. Throughout the trilogy, Wood was part of an unbelievable ensemble cast that also included Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, and Andy Serkis.
During GQ's ongoing series in which actors break down their most iconic characters, Wood recalled wanting to land the role of Frodo so badly that he made his own elaborate audition tape (which was not common at the time) to impress director Peter Jackson. Read how Wood recounted the experience below:
I went to a vocal coach for the dialect and enlisted some friends, including George Wang, who is a writer and filmmaker. We went out to the woods in Griffith Park and shot two of the audition sequences there and one at my house. There were three scenes, each one was sort of a different aspect of Frodo along the journey, the last one being quite deeply affected by the ring.
After shooting the tape at several locations, Wood edited it at the Miramax office, sent the VHS tape off to Jackson, and the rest is history:
I got a call from Peter himself, which was amazing, totally mindblowing and the adventure and opportunity of a lifetime.
Similar to Wood, Peter Jackson was largely unknown before the Lord of the Rings trilogy, having only directed lower-budget features like Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners. It's likely that Jackson was impressed by the ambition and resourcefulness that Wood demonstrated by shooting and editing his own audition tape, given that Jackson once was an independent filmmaker himself. Wood's big efforts certainly paid off, and he clearly followed through once he was chosen to play Frodo.
Today, it would be difficult to imagine anyone but Wood and Jackson occupying their respective roles in the trilogy. After the Lord of the Rings, Jackson went on to make the Hobbit trilogy, the first film of which, An Unexpected Journey, Wood reprised his role as Frodo for. Since then, Wood has starred in a few eccentric indie dramas like I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore, but it's hard not to think all this success hinged on the elaborate Lord of the Rings audition tape he made one afternoon.
Source: GQ