Elijah Quotes
Elijah has some diverse opinions, not only about LotR and the other movies he has stared in, but about other important issues as well. Check them out kids!
Lord of the Rings
"He loves red wine and he loves chess. "You like red wine? I've got red wine. Yes man!" Fantastic. And he would play - he is awesome at chess!" - Talking about Kiran, one of the hobbits who represented the actors for the wide shots.
"...so if you can imagine, the four hobbits in a trailer - with Ian McKellen"
"My God! Middle Earth does exist!"
"I lived in New Zealand for 16 months, this was my life."
"It is a long time (on the 16 months working in NZ),and the great thing is we actually became a family, and the fellowship that is represented in the film, became a real fellowship, I mean I've made some of my best friends of my life on this picture. I'm so blessed to be a part of this project..."
"I was working in Austin, Texas, on 'The Faculty,' and that's where Harry lives, and he often visited the set because he was friends with Robert Rodriguez. [Knowles in fact had a cameo in the film as one of the titular alien-possessed teachers. -- Ed.] And one day he came up to me, and he was like, 'Dude, they're making 'Lord of the Rings' as a feature. You gotta play Frodo!' And the news was really exciting, but they weren't casting for it at that point. It was just kind of in the news. I first heard about it from him, [but] I actually wasn't approached to audition for it until nearly a year later..."
"I'm a TOY! This is the coolest thing in the world!" - Being a figurine
"There were a lot of strange, new experiences for all of us in this movie, so it was just one of the many after a while. But it was certainly bizarre, especially to have a picture [taken with me and] my smaller self. I remember one day I noticed this kind of bin, and inside the bin -- I opened it up -- there were all of the Hobbit faces. And we took a picture of it, because it was so bizarre! It looked so eerie! Because nothing was filling the faces. They were just these blank expressions..." About the scary hobbit masks
"Frodo has an amazing amount of trust in Gandalf, and anything that Gandalf would ask him to do, Frodo would know that it would be for the best ..."
"They actually go bad, if you let them have too much air after awhile, they start smelling like urine..."About the smelly hobbit feet "My agent called me and said, 'Look, they're casting 'Lord of the Rings'; Peter Jackson is gonna direct it, and you should go in and put yourself on tape', the idea of putting myself on tape in a casting office wasn't particularly attractive to me, mainly because I wanted to try to convey my passion for the project and for the role, and going into the casting office against a white background and being put on tape did not seem at all conducive to what I wanted to portray. So I [decided to do] my own tape, which I'd never done before, but I figured that this project deserved my own interpretation and my full attention. So I got a voice coach and worked on my accent for a little while, and then a few friends of mine got together and we went up to the Hollywood Hills after getting some costumes at Western Costume, and we shot the scenes like you would a film, [with] various angles and things. And we went that night to the Miramax offices and borrowed their Avid machine and edited it together, and the next day I brought the video into the casting office and I kind of let it go, just knowing that I'd put my best foot forward in terms of getting the role, and I would see what happened. And it all went from there....”About audition videos
"It was pretty accurate! It was kind of ghostly. But it was also quite cool as well, because we all got to stand back and watch people of real Hobbit size walk around and, essentially, they were Hobbits…”On his Frodo rubber mask
"The Hobbit feet were great initially, but the novelty did wear off. I've never worn that many prosthetics before, it was an incredible work of art, a defining feature. We started at 5am and had to stand for an hour and a half while they applied them, so we did get tired after awhile. My feet were the sweatiest so it would melt the glue and they would fall off after a while..."
"You see - you see you've got two behind you!"
"And they were actually shooting off weapons ah - down below."
Other Movies
I think Leo is a really sweet kid... he's sort of weak and sort of insecure at the beginning. He's sort of different than everybody else, and I like that." About his character Leo in Deep Impact
"He is weakly, definitely weakly. Which is good, because I didn't really play anything like him before. I was very excited to mix it up and do something different. I had to play the insecure without the clichés, which all those all type characters have connected to them. That was the challenge I and everyone else had as well…”About his character Casey in The Faculty
General Issues
"I actually worked with Michel Gondry who directed the - um "Around the World" video for Daft Punk"
"The whole anti-MP3 thing pisses me off and especially Lars Ulrich. People had the opportunity to listen to bands they'd never heard before. It was doing more good than harm but people with greed for money were trying to stop a revolution. I don't like his attitude. " - Elijah's views on the Anti-MP3 movement
"I actually got a crush on Anne Heche when I worked with her on Huckleberry Finn... it didn't work out." (Crushes)
Yeah, you know, Salma Hayek I've worked with her, Brooke Shields, I've worked with her, I have their phone numbers... and you're gonna hate me even more cuz I don't call them!" About working with female actors
"If I'm with friends, I want to talk about sports or games or a new CD that's coming out. When we talk about me, it's about me as a person, not an actor. That's great. That's a relief."
"So much time is wasted on trying to be better than others."
"Child acting is a cut-throat world, which is pretty frightening and really silly in retrospect. But it's the parents who are evil. It is a really difficult world to live in if you don't have a base, if you don't have a strong sense of yourself. My mom wanted me to maintain a reasonable degree of normalcy and to enjoy my childhood. Family is so important. I rarely meet families who are as close as we are. I feel really blessed..."
"If you cut off your arm instead of going 'spurt, spurt, spurt' wouldn't it, like, go nuts? Or would it go with the beat of your heart?” Elijah, age 13
"If I were out there with kids my own age, I fear that they wouldn't like me, not because of who I am but because I'm an actor. It's scary-it's like you can't trust anybody..." (Elijah age 13)
"I'm kind of a monkey, I like to jump around. I can't sit down. I have to keep moving. I like moving and running around and having fun..."Elijah age 12
"I'm not on drugs. I'm not an alcoholic. I've just got incredible people backing me up...I wouldn't even think about taking drugs. I think it's ridiculous! I think people are throwing their lives away. River Phoenix was such a talented actor. I would have loved to see him win an Oscar. He so deserved it. Obviously he got mixed in with the wrong crowd. That ruined him. I love life. I've always been this way."
“The worst kind of lying I’ve ever done is keeping things from people.”
"I was living in Iowa where I was born. I was about six years old, when my mother was watching a TV commercial one day, and it popped into her head that I’d love to do this. 'He loves life, he's got a ton of energy, it's a great channel for energy..." Talking about his career)
"That’s the kind of movie that should be making massive money - not that f***ing Pearl Harbor piece of s**t!"
"I haven't gotten that far yet. I want to write some things for myself as an experiment. I don't want to limit myself in saying that I want to do a particular type of thing. I am open to everything, I am just interested in that whole process of filmmaking. Lighting, the visuals really amaze me, and to plan the visuals with something profound...”(On future directing)
"Marriage is way far away from me. Oh yes, oh God yes, almost definitely. Marriage is so far off, I gotta have a lot of life to live, I've gotta have a lot of things to do. Marriage is something I want to do when I am in my 30ies..."
“Family life has kept me going in the sense that I’ve been able to enjoy a normal childhood. My mom Debbie has been a constant source of support. I have an older brother, Zach, and a younger sister, Hannah, and we’re a close-knit group. I have seen what can go wrong with people who start off as child stars, such as Macaulay Culkin.”
"I'm not a star. A star is nothing but a ball of gas!"
"I think God gave me a talent to use for the positive and to do an horror movie would be, like, overstepping my bounds. If I was to do a horror film, I wouldn't want to be paid. It would be like a vacation, because you don't really have to use your acting skills."
"Isn't it funny you say that! Yeah, it does! Well, it also means 'Messenger of God,' but I believe it does mean Chosen One..." Talking about the meaning of Elijah
"My GOD! Ridiculous. I’ve never been in so much pain in my life." About getting his tattoo
"My older brother told me, 'Stay away from women', and I'm taking it to heart. I'm staying clear. It's kind of like a museum where they have those really cool paintings. They're behind the glass and you can look at them, but you can't touch them. That's what it's like with girls. I can get myself into trouble. And also it's hard because I'm an actor and girls might not like me for who I am. That's hard to deal with."
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.”
"That’s all right. You can call me Frodo. Go on, Dave, it’s okay."
"I don't read the teen magazines. They're weird. I see headlines like 'Big Blue Eyes Elijah Wood: We've Got Him!" I don't like that. It's so bubble-gummy."
"...[I]n the absence of love, there is nothing worth fighting for."
"Um, I have done a bit of DJ'ing. I wouldn't - I think that DJ purist would probably hate me..."
"You can get in a lot of trouble in Prague. I've spent some time there. There's an underbelly, but I didn't really delve into that dark side."