17 / 64
17
DVD
&
BD
FEATURE
week, I wanted as much of it as possible to
be me on screen as Bilbo.
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
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
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.
