I
definitely need to sleep more. But as they say, you can sleep when
you're dead.
I
mean, I've been around a long time compared to a lot of other actors. I
mean, I've been working on and off for 20 odd years.
I
think that people who get to a certain position, and then try to
ferociously defend it or build on it, it's kind of a dead-end street.
You see people becoming miserable that way.
I'm
just looking as always for something that's stimulating and I hope to
find a good story that's a challenge, whether it's big or small. Or that
it finds me. I don't have like a career plan. Maybe I should, but I
don't.
I've
been told that I've arrived many times over the years so I take it with
a grain of salt. It's a relatively new situation obviously, but if it
all went up in smoke tomorrow, I wouldn't really care that much. There
are a lot of things that interest me. As for my fortunes, it's really a
crap shoot.
If
you're trying to please everyone, then you're not going to make anything
that is honestly yours, I don't think, in the long run.
In
a movie, you're raw material, just a hue of some color and the director
makes the painting.
It's
also just weird getting that much fan mail from strangers. I may just
have to say that if I'm doing a book signing or you catch me on the
street, then fine. But otherwise I cannot do it anymore. It takes hours
everyday and it takes too much time away from other things I must do.
Like
most people I can be lazy, so it's nice to have a goal or deadline or
reason to work out. I feel better when I get to exercise, or when I'm
outdoors. I like to hike, swim and run, and I love to play soccer.
There's
a great museum in Cody, Wyo., called the Buffalo Bill Historical Center.
I went to their research library about 15 or 20 years ago and looked
through their files and saw my mother, her sister and my uncle as
descendents in the family tree. It was pretty cool.
You
get all these things, there are all these letters and gifts, sometimes
strange ones; most of the time it can be really nice. But at the same
time, it's overwhelming. Because I know I'm going to have to look
through it. Most of it is filling the corners of my house and I can't
respond to it all right away.
It
comes down to the fact that you supply the blue, and they supply the
other colors and mix them with your blue, and maybe there's some blue
left in the painting and maybe there isn't. Maybe there wasn't supposed
to be any there in the first place. So have some fun and make a good
blue and walk away.
I
don't plan my career, I wait and hope the right thing will find me.
Photography,
painting or poetry those are just extensions of me, how I perceive
things, they are my way of communicating
I'm
the one who said yes to these movies, and now I'm having to pay the
price for it. I mean if I had my druthers, I wouldn't do any movies
anymore, frankly.
I
was on my way out of a Sunday rehearsal. When I was walking out of the
gym, all sort of sweaty, half in street clothes and half in Aragorn's
clothes, waiving the sword around, trying to keep a mental picture of
what we've just done. Just walking down the street, down to where my car
was parked, on a Sunday afternoon, waiving the sword around, looking
like some desperate Rasputin character. Cops car comes: there's been
some report...
I'm
not 23 years old and I don't have plans to make another 20 big Hollywood
movies or something.
Well,
I certainly wouldn't be here and my face wouldn't be up there on a
poster if it wasn't for the success of Lord of the Rings. It's just a
fact: film-making, finance, life.
Seeing
who you are playing with is a relief. In The Lord of the Rings we did a
lot of things when there was nothing there.
But
I can also publish books by interesting painters and writers and I can
afford to do so because my own books sell and there's a public that's
interested in that. And the public have gone to see exhibitions I've had
- more than they would have.
There
is no star in LOTR. The Fellowship is a union.
