STACK NZ Apr #61

FEATURE

DVD & BD

week, I wanted as much of it as possible to be me on screen as Bilbo.

is not, ‘Isn’t everything brilliant?’ That’s not my natural state. I very easily go towards darkness, I suppose, and certainly as an actor I find myself slipping over there until someone says, ‘Stop it.’ I like humour. I like being funny. I like playing joy. But I don’t like two- dimensional anything. Like people who say, ‘I’m playing angry so I’ll be grumpy for the entire thing.’ It’s just not true. Basically, if you’re going for truth, everyone—from me to you—spends time being grumpy and sad and joyful and happy and funny. Everybody. I think that’s part of your job as an actor to reflect that, and obviously the stuff that Bilbo goes through… there will be darkness there, definitely, especially for someone who has come from where he’s come from. It will be horrifying what he goes through, and I enjoy exploring that stuff. Sometimes I think if it’s not written, I’ll put it in anyway, because it’s more interesting to play. But it is written in this because they spent a lot of time and effort making sure it was layered. I will always want to put those things in anyway, otherwise I won’t believe it. How was the final day of the shoot? How did you feel? I was relieved and sad. It surprised me. I’m very emotional and sentimental about lots of things, but I’m not very emotional about finishing work. I like finishing jobs always. It’s certainly not a mark of whether I’m enjoying it or not. Every job I’ve loved

Presumably Bilbo doesn’t have to be the most accomplished fighter anyway? No, he doesn’t. He never turns into a warrior as such, but he definitely turns into a scrapper. By the end of it, he’s very handy to the cause. He’s getting stuck in.

He’s no longer the timid character he begins as?

No, and that would be so tedious to watch and to play. If I was only being a wide-eyed Hobbit forever, that would be boring. And the good thing about the story, is that this is never what it was. He went from innocence to experience. What is his biggest test in this final film? He’s already faced the dragon… He has faced the dragon. Without giving anything away, I would say his greatest challenge is playing the Kofi Annan role and trying to keep the peace, trying to somehow avoid there being this massive, apocalyptic battle. It’s his way of trying to neutralise that—that’s his biggest challenge. You’re fantastic at playing dark figures. Did you want to show that of Bilbo? Yeah. Of course, it intrinsically would be there. If Bilbo is watching his friend suffer, you can’t do that in a cute Hobbit-y ingénue way. It would be terrible if you did, so you’re led by your reaction. I’m not morose. I don’t think I’m a dark person but my natural state

I’ve been delighted to finish. Because that’s reality. If somebody said, ‘You’re going to be Bilbo for the rest of your life’, that would be a nightmare. But on the last day, the last bit of filming was with Richard Armitage and Graham McTavish, who plays Dwalin, and I was leaving just before they were.They had a bit more to do, and Graham said, ‘It’s been lovely working with you, mate’, and he had a catch in his voice and he started to go, and I thought, ‘Oh, I’m gonna go here as well’. And I hadn’t felt that in two years. But I suddenly realised I’ve spent a good chunk of my life with these mad people. And I did get a bit emotional.This has been a huge part of our lives, both while we were doing it and while we were not doing it. I’ll be talking aboutThe Hobbit films until I’m 90. It’s never going to go. But that last day, I was relieved and surprisingly choked up.

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