Sean Astin: The Year's Most Heroic Sidekick

If I were on a near-hopeless quest, I'd want loyal and true Samwise at my side, wouldn't you? This guy takes constant abuse and goes through hell to support his pal Frodo. If we can believe the reports of Sean Astin's co-stars, Sean is like that too... a good pal though thick and thin. Speaking of thin, Sean has lost his Samwise fat and looked quite dapper when we chatted with him recently about the crazy production schedule that jumped from scenes in film one to some in film three. An actor's nightmare.

The actor, son of actress Patty Duke, has show biz in his blood and enjoys directing as much as acting. His short film, The Long and the Short of It was shot on the set of LOTR and is part of the DVD of "The Two Towers". Sean's daughter played Sam's young daughter in "Return of the King". He'll next appear as an actor opposite Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler in the comedy Fifty First Dates. The most naturally energetic of the Hobbit dudes, Sean bounced into our interview room wearing a classy black jacket and carrying a Red Bull....

Sean: When I started drinking one of these, everyone attacked me, 'No, Sean, not you – no Red Bull.' I think it's crack. It can't be right, the fact that I felt the way I did beforehand and then afterwards... it ought to be a regulated substance. [He sits and calms down].

TeenHollywood: You are so emotional in "Return". Were the emotional scenes spread out over time or shot all together?

Sean: You're only seeing like a hundredth of the emotion that we did. We filmed so many more crying scenes than ended up in the movie. It was like waves, it was kind of like a tidal kind of emotion. It was spread out, but all the gaps in between were filled up with other things. I think there were a few moments where there was down time. We were filming one of those scenes, the scene on the ledge of Cirith Ugol, where Frodo sends Sam away, we filmed my close-ups of that in November of '99, and then we filmed Elijah's close-ups, the reverses of those, in August of 2000.

TeenHollywood: Why was there so long in between? That must have been hard.

Sean: It was a quirk of production logistics. A whole village they'd built on this river got flooded because of a huge typhoon, and so there was a whole crew who needed to shoot something so they got some polystyrene rocks loaded up on a container from Wellington, and shipped down to the South Island, and talked the guy at the hotel into letting us use the squash court for a stage, and we went in there and we started filming. We were in the middle of shooting the beginning of the first film, and then one day it was like, 'oh tomorrow you're going to be doing one of the climaxes of the third film'. I remember that morning, 'Elijah and I were like, I'm not ready, are you ready?' 'No, I'm not ready, are you ready'? No. How are we going to do it?' 'We'll tell Pete we have to do something else' And then we went through the make-up process and then somehow we were there, and we just did it. Then we did it again, and we did it again, and again and again. They weren't scheduled to come back down until six months later. And sure enough, eight or nine months later, we turn up and Peter has a clamshell and he's like, 'And these are the shots we did, and now we're going to do the reverse.' You sort of think, but now I really know the character, can we do my close-ups again?'

TeenHollywood: You are the true hero of "Return". Sam really comes through.

Sean: I feel that he does. Sam becomes important to the spine of the story at the end of the books, and the climax of what is the third film, because at a certain point the ring can't go forward anymore without Sam. So to that extent I knew there was going to come a time, while shooting and while viewing the movies, where everyone's attention would be directed towards Sam. So you just want to be equal to the moment.

TeenHollywood: You and Elijah go through an incredible bonding through this film. In real life did you really become great friends?

Sean: There's a number of anecdotes – when I was in New York, he let me stay in his apartment. When he was in the hospital, I called and checked on him. On September 11th, after I called my immediate family, I wanted to find out what happened with him, and he was on a plane that had left just before the four planes out of the same airport, an American Airlines flight, from Newark to L.A. and his plane got diverted to Tennessee, or something like that. So I talked with him for a long time from there, from the hotel he was in.

It's funny because, it's not like we need to see each other all the time, he has his own life and I have my wife and kids, but there's this sense that we're family and we think about each other and we check in on each other and we hope each other is doing well, and we see each other every ten minutes doing "Lord of the Rings" stuff anyway. I think we'll permanently be friends – we shot for half a decade together.

TeenHollywood: How did it feel when you saw this last film?

Sean: The first time I watched it, in a private screening room, with a couple of the other actors, it was funny. Liv was like, when Viggo is talking to Miranda Otto, she was like, 'You cheating bastard!' She was having fun. The first time you watch it as the actor, you're looking at all the stuff that's not there. You're like, wait a minute, if we're here that means that scene was cut out and then you're distracted from what you're watching. So it's kind of a horrifying first experience. And then we saw it at the premiere, and we were drunk from the hundred and ten thousand people who'd been heaping adulation and praise – there was a tickertape parade and there was a speech and the Prime Minister was there, and members of Parliament, and okay, now watch the movie.

My daughter was there, and watching the movie through her eyes was special. And I was appreciating the film a lot more the second time on a bigger screen with better sound. There's a longer version of the film that's even better, and I can't wait to see the extended version DVD because the world press, the ticket buying public and the studio would kill Peter if he had turned in something longer than 3 hours and 10 minutes, but with all the work that we did, there's a 4 ½ hour version of the movie that's good. You know you can't put that out, but all of the actors I think have scenes and bits and moments that you want to see and that you're attracted to.

TeenHollywood: Can you sum up your director Peter in three or four adjectives?

Sean: Clever, creative and .... Strategic.

TeenHollywood: What was your very last shot of the film?

Sean: The last shot for me, I was just so exhausted, so tired. It's funny because I can have tons of energy about something new and different, and then as soon as it's time to get back to "The Lord of the Rings", somehow I'd get this overwhelmed feeling and I don't understand that really, but that's what happens. It was in slow motion and Elijah's got to fall down, and so there was a lot of falling and getting up and slow motion turning and looking at the wind, and when it was over we had to run over to the sound-mixer and record this four page speech of poetry that they could use. So we did that, and then we went into the Hobbiton set, which had been rebuilt for the scene for when the four Hobbits are back in the pub and they're changed – and Peter said some really nice things about me and about my family and everybody was there and they gave me Sam's backpack, which I really wanted, and a sword and a pair of feet. They gave my daughter the dress that she wore at the end of the movie. And it was so funny, she held it up to her and it was so small compared to her body now.

TeenHollywood: Whose idea was it that she play the part of Sam's daughter in the film?

Sean: It was Peter, Fran [Walsh, writer/producer] and my idea to do that. They had put their children in the movie a lot, and I remember some pregnant moment where it was like, 'I really want her to play Eleanor.' And they were like, 'Oh yeah, we'll do that.' And it's one of my favorite things about the whole thing, because she's immortalized in time at three years old. And when she saw it at the premiere in New Zealand, she had such an interesting, complex reaction to the whole thing, seeing it and herself.

TeenHollywood: Do you think this last film deserves the Oscar?

Sean: I don't know everything else that's out there. I'll give you a better answer – if people recognize things based on the quality and determination and intent that goes into something, then sure, but in terms of the outcome I'm not sure, I don't have objectivity on it. I'm too close to it.

***

Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.