Interesting Facts

Sir Christopher Lee was a passionate Tolkien fan long before he played Saruman. He read The Lord of the Rings once a year from its first publication in 1954 until his death in 2015. He was also the only cast or crew member who had met Tolkien in person. According to Peter Jackson's documentary, Lee wanted to play Gandalf, but Jackson considered him better suited to Saruman.

When filming ended, Peter Jackson gave one of the rings used in the film to Elijah Wood and Andy Serkis. Both believed they had the one ring, but both were wrong.

According to Sean Astin in his Extended DVD commentary, the floor was magnetized for the scene in which Bilbo drops the ring. This way the ring would not bounce, emphasizing its importance and weight.

Sean Bean (Boromir) was afraid of flying, so while the snowy mountain scenes were being shot he spent two hours every morning climbing from the foot of the mountain to the set in his Boromir costume. While the crew went up by helicopter, they could see him below.

Gandalf hitting his head on a ceiling beam in Bilbo's hobbit-hole was not in the script. When Ian McKellen accidentally struck his forehead, Peter Jackson thought he was 'playing it off' and used the take.

During filming, most members of the fellowship took up surfing in their spare time. When Viggo Mortensen took a bad fall and bruised one side of his face, the makeup artists could not hide the bruise. Jackson therefore shot Mortensen from only one side for the entire scene. When they find the tomb in the Mines of Moria, Aragorn is visible from only one side.

As well as being the only cast member to have met Tolkien, Sir Christopher Lee was the first person cast in the trilogy, thanks to his command of the books. He often visited the makeup department and offered hints about creature designs.

Viggo Mortensen carried his sword with him off set to stay in character. When his training sessions with the sword were noticed by the public, he was questioned by police several times.

John Rhys-Davies, who played the dwarf Gimli, was the tallest actor in the fellowship. He is 1.85 m tall.

The narration in the prologue was initially going to be given to Elijah Wood, but it was felt that Frodo had no connection to the events being described. Ian McKellen was also tried, but Gandalf was not there either. In the end they settled on Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, because it emphasized the timelessness of the elves.

It was Viggo Mortensen who threw the apple at Pippin's head after Pippin asked about second breakfast. They had to shoot the scene sixteen times to get it right; Billy Boyd says Mortensen enjoyed it very much.

The Elvish lines in the film are not quotations from the book but were derived from Tolkien's limited Elvish vocabulary. Dialect coach Andrew Jack guided the pronunciations using Tolkien's records.

The scream heard when the dragon firework explodes at the party is Billy Boyd's real scream. At that moment he did not know the firework would actually go off on set; he thought it would be done in a separate take. It was not in the script but made it into the final cut.

After production, Viggo Mortensen bought Arwen's horse and gave it to Liv Tyler's stunt double, Jane Abbott.

All three films were shot at the same time, the first 'back-to-back' production in Hollywood history. Filming lasted 438 days over 14 months.

A computer program called MASSIVE created the CGI armies. Thanks to their individual fields of view, these digital creatures could 'think' and fight independently and tell friend from foe. The directing team could click on a creature in a crowd scene of twenty thousand and see through its 'eyes.' Different species had unique fighting styles.

Viggo Mortensen did his own stunts. In battle scenes he insisted on using a real steel sword instead of a lightweight aluminum or rubber one.

Swordmaster Bob Anderson said of Viggo Mortensen, 'the best swordsman I have ever trained.'

Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn), who speaks three languages, asked for the script to be revised so he could say more of his lines in Elvish.

Orlando Bloom landed the role of Legolas two days before finishing drama school.

Viggo Mortensen joined the team after filming had begun; he neither knew director Peter Jackson nor had read Tolkien's book. It was his eleven-year-old son Henry, a big fan of the book, who convinced him to accept the role of Aragorn.

While shooting the 'If you want him, come and claim him!' scene, Liv Tyler accidentally cut her right leg with the blade. This moment appeared in the film's mistakes and deleted scenes section.

One of Peter Jackson's most important moves was bringing the famous Tolkien artists Alan Lee and John Howe onto the team. A FedEx package was sent to Lee containing a letter describing Jackson's film Heavenly Creatures (1994) and his intentions; the package was tracked at every step, but everyone was surprised when Lee called just three hours after delivery to say he wanted to work on it. Howe, meanwhile, was living in Switzerland and was called at 2 a.m. because the time difference had been miscalculated. He says his biggest frustration was having to wait until Jackson finished his offer, because he wanted to say 'yes' immediately.

The filming of the trilogy is estimated to have brought about 200 million dollars into the New Zealand economy. The government even appointed a Minister of The Lord of the Rings to take advantage of the economic opportunities the films offered.

One of the unintelligible words Gandalf whispers to the moth when he is imprisoned by Saruman was 'Gwaihir,' the name of the eagle that rescues him.

During filming, more than 1,600 latex ears and feet were used; each was baked in a dedicated oven that ran twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Because there was no way to remove the feet without damaging them, each pair could be used only once. The feet that were used were destroyed to prevent a black market, though Dominic Monaghan (Merry) was seen keeping a pair.

Bilbo Baggins's birthday cake had one hundred and eleven candles, and they eventually set the styrofoam cake on fire.

Viggo Mortensen broke a tooth during a fight scene. Peter Jackson asked him to glue the tooth back with superglue so they could finish the scene, but he took him to a dentist during the lunch break to have it repaired, and he returned to the set that afternoon.

Before production, it had to be tested whether computer effects could make scenes with thousands of warriors convincing. Peter Jackson put his own money into software development, using the computers of Weta Digital, which had been purchased for his previous film The Frighteners (1996).

After the New Zealand premiere, Peter Jackson joined the actors playing the nine members of the Fellowship in getting a commemorative tattoo. Theirs was the Elvish symbol for '9', while Jackson's was the Elvish '10'.

The people working in the orc smithies beneath Isengard were actually the WETA Workshop team; this team produced all the weapons used in the film.

In the book, about 17 years pass between Gandalf's departure from Bilbo's party, his visit to the stone city in Gondor to gather information about the ring, and his return to Frodo. In the film this period is reduced to a few weeks, but it was preserved in the 1978 animated version. Also, in the film Frodo leaves the Shire the night Gandalf visits, whereas in the novel selling his home and moving takes weeks. A detail not stated in the film: the stone city Gandalf visits is Minas Tirith, and it will gain greater importance in The Return of the King (2003).

Elrond's Council was changed considerably compared with the book. In the book, this scene is a moment of regrouping in which the characters report on the situation and Frodo continues his task (Frodo has already decided to take the ring to Mount Doom). The screenwriters turned it into a heated argument in which Frodo makes his decision, but it was difficult to keep all the quarreling parties in the visual arrangement. The scene was rewritten during shooting because it had begun to be too long and expository: Boromir's speech was read from a piece of paper in Sean Bean's lap because the text had been given to him the night before.

Orlando Bloom (Legolas) did most of his own stunts and broke a rib in the process.

During one take of the Bucklebury Ferry scene, Elijah Wood overshot his jump and fell into the river rather than onto the ferry.

The scene in which Frodo and Gandalf sit in a cart used forced perspective; Elijah Wood was three meters behind Sir Ian McKellen.

The hobbits needed to appear about 90-120 cm tall and small next to the seven-foot Gandalf. This was generally achieved with forced perspective: McKellen was constantly placed closer to the camera than Wood so that the eye would perceive him as larger. Special props and sets were designed to preserve the effect when the camera moved.

Two sets of Bilbo Baggins's home, Bag End, were built: one for the hobbits, and another thirty-three percent smaller for full-size McKellen, down to smaller versions of the books on the shelves.

While the Fellowship struggled through snowdrifts, Legolas walked on top of the snow. This is consistent with the novel; the novel says Elves' feet are so light that they can walk on snow.

The first cut of the film was four hours and thirty minutes.

Sir Ian McKellen created Gandalf's accent by drawing inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien's manner of speech.

Liv Tyler deepened her voice so much for the role of Arwen that her father, Steven Tyler, asked whether her voice had been dubbed by someone else.

Sean Astin gained thirteen and a half kilos to play Samwise Gamgee.

The Elves' eye color indicated which people they belonged to: the Elves of Lothlorien had light blue eyes, while the Elves of Rivendell had dark blue eyes.

Hobbiton was built a year before production began so that it would look natural and lived-in; it even had real vegetable gardens. The greenery department controlled the length of the grass by having sheep graze on it.

In the scene where Bilbo eyes the ring, a terrifying puppet was placed on Sir Ian Holm's face. Holm was so pleased with the puppet that the design team made a cast-iron copy and gave it to him as a farewell gift when filming ended.

Eight of the nine members of the Fellowship got a small tattoo reading 'nine' in the Tengwar alphabet. John Rhys-Davies refused and sent his stunt double in his place. Elijah Wood's tattoo is on his lower abdomen, Sean Astin's and Billy Boyd's are on their ankles, Orlando Bloom's is on his forearm, Sir Ian McKellen's is on his shoulder, Dominic Monaghan's is on his shoulder, Sean Bean's is on his right shoulder, and Viggo Mortensen's is on his left shoulder. Bloom's tattoo is visible in a fight scene in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and Mortensen's is visible in some photos from the film Eastern Promises.

Miramax was the first studio to show interest in Peter Jackson's idea of adapting the books, but it wanted to do everything in a single film. Jackson refused and had to find another studio within four weeks. Believing that no studio would go for three films, Jackson was prepared to present the project as two films. Through his friend Mark Ordesky, a meeting was arranged with New Line Cinema President Robert Shaye. Shaye's only objection was that it really needed to be three films.

Orlando Bloom originally auditioned for the role of Faramir, but was called back and cast as the more prominent Legolas.

The irony of the scene in which the Fellowship mourns Gandalf's loss is that at that point none of the actors had met Sir Ian McKellen, or even seen him in his wizard's costume.

In the scene where Bilbo finds the Ring, Gollum cries out 'My precious!' But Andy Serkis was not on set that day, so Dominic Monaghan stood in for him.

Costume designer Ngila Dickson had forty tailors working under her, and they produced more than 19,000 costumes.

Legolas's arrows in the final battle are computer-generated. For a long time, firing that many arrows that quickly and accurately was considered physically impossible. But after the film, many skilled archers showed that even Legolas's fastest rate of fire could be replicated in real life. This is only possible when the quiver hangs from the hip, not carried on the back as Legolas does. Another strategy is to use no quiver at all and hold multiple arrows between the fingers of the drawing hand.

The scripts were being rewritten almost every day throughout the sixteen-month shoot; the actors contributed as well, and all of them were deeply attached to their characters.

Viggo Mortensen was so absorbed in his character that during one conversation director Peter Jackson addressed him as 'Aragorn' for more than half an hour and Mortensen did not notice.

Peter Jackson's original plan was to hire only British actors for the hobbit roles. In the end Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan were the only Britons, and Jackson gave them the task of teaching Elijah Wood and Sean Astin about British pub culture.

Costume designer Ngila Dickson followed Tolkien's descriptions of the characters' clothing as literally as possible. For example, Bilbo Baggins's waistcoat with brass buttons, also mentioned in 'The Hobbit'.

Gimli's line 'Nobody tosses a dwarf!' was filmed after the 'Toss me' line in The Two Towers.

When Boromir's body is placed in a boat to be sent over the Falls of Rauros, we see Aragorn putting Boromir's bracers on his own arms. This was Viggo Mortensen's idea: that Aragorn wears them both as a tribute to his fallen friend and to remind himself of the promise he made to Boromir. He wears the bracers for the rest of the trilogy, and they are still on him when he is buried more than a hundred years later.

Throughout the trilogy, Legolas speaks only five words to Frodo ('and my bow') in the scene at Elrond's council. It could even be argued that these words are addressed to the whole council.

In the scene using Boromir's lifeless body, a crew member taking a food order asked the other actors, 'Does he want anything?' Sean Bean's dummy was that realistic.

John Rhys-Davies had an allergic reaction to his prosthetics; there was inflammation especially around his eyes. Because of this, back-to-back shooting was not possible, and at least a day had to be left for his skin to return to normal. He never spent less than three hours in the makeup chair.

Sean Bean claims that on the day the scene of the Fellowship leaving Rivendell was shot, he was not in New Zealand and must have been added digitally.

Sean Bean describes Boromir's death in this film as his favourite among the many death scenes he has played on screen.

Sir Ian McKellen had not read the books when Sir Peter Jackson first called him about the role of Gandalf. What convinced him was Jackson's excitement about the project.

Miramax spent 14 million dollars developing the project, but because of budget estimates the Weinstein brothers needed Disney's approval. Harvey Weinstein proposed two films with a total budget not exceeding 180 million dollars. Disney chairman Michael Eisner rejected the offer, believing that The Lord of the Rings could not be adapted into a film and that the fantasy genre had a limited audience. Once rejected, the Weinsteins reluctantly allowed Sir Peter Jackson to take the project to other studios. Jackson later said he was glad the deal with Weinstein fell through and accused him of being 'a real bully' and of 'mafia-style thuggery'. It was alleged that Weinstein wanted to take the project away from Jackson and give it to Quentin Tarantino, and that he forbade Jackson from casting Mira Sorvino and Ashley Judd (who would later accuse Weinstein of sexual assault). Jackson vowed never to work with Weinstein again and took the project to Robert Shaye, CEO of New Line Cinema. Shaye eventually approved a three-film series with a total budget of 300 million dollars.

In the council scene at Rivendell, as Boromir pleads for the Ring to be taken to Gondor, the 'Gondor theme' is faintly heard in the background. In The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, when the characters finally reach Gondor, this theme plays as a full orchestral piece. Composer Howard Shore had not planned that this Rivendell background music would become the 'Gondor main theme' in the third film, but in the end it did.

A big-budget film usually shoots with more than one unit at a time, generally two or three. On these films, sometimes five to seven units were shooting at once.

Stuart Townsend was originally cast as Aragorn, but after four days of shooting Sir Peter Jackson realised a older actor was needed and replaced him with Viggo Mortensen.

When Frodo abandons the group on the Anduin River and sets off on the journey alone, divers checked the water to clear it of sharp objects and debris. Despite their saying 'It's fine,' Sean Astin stepped on a piece of glass while running after Sam; the glass went all the way through his foot, and he had to be taken by helicopter to the nearest hospital for stitches.

When Frodo flees from Boromir and climbs the hill with the Ring, he sees that he is approaching Sauron's lair at Barad-dur. This is not an effect of putting on the Ring. The place he runs to is Amon Hen - the 'Hill of the Eye', a place that guards the borders of Gondor - and it has a magical property that grants those at its summit the ability to see distant places as if looking through a telescope.

In the great scene where Gandalf faces the Balrog, Sir Ian McKellen was actually acting opposite a green ping-pong ball. This ball, combined with green-screen technology, provided the actors with a reference point for large CGI characters.

Composers usually work on films for six to eight weeks. By the time this film was released, Howard Shore's involvement had reached two years.

The moth that Gandalf whispers to was born shortly before that scene was shot and died as soon as the scene was finished.

Throughout the trilogy, Legolas's eye color changes from blue to brown. The reason was that the contact lenses Orlando Bloom wore scratched his cornea, so he could not wear them every day. In some shots, the post-production team digitally changed his eye color.

Sean Astin estimates that during the sixteen-month shoot there were fifty separate days when the Hobbits' prosthetic feet were attached but not visible on camera.

Although Frodo addresses Bilbo as 'Uncle Bilbo,' according to J.R.R. Tolkien Frodo is Bilbo's second cousin. Pippin also describes his relationship with Frodo at the Prancing Pony in the same way.

The large tree standing above Bag End was specially built by the production department. Every single leaf was attached by hand.

Orlando Bloom spent two months learning to use a bow.

More than twelve and a half million plastic rings were produced to make chain mail for the film. Two crew members linked the rings into armor by hand throughout the shoot. By the end of production, the fingerprints on their thumbs and index fingers had been worn away.

Sean Connery was offered 10 million dollars per film and 15% of the trilogy's gross receipts for the role of Gandalf. He turned it down on the grounds that he 'didn't understand the story'; had he accepted, he would have earned a total of 210 million dollars.

The screams of the Orcs in the Mines of Moria were inspired by the sounds possums make at night.

The scene in the prologue where Bilbo finds the Ring is the last scene Ian Holm shot as Bilbo. The same scene is the first scene Martin Freeman shot as Bilbo in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

When Frodo falls in the snow and loses the Ring, a giant ring six inches in diameter was used so that both Frodo and the Ring could stay in focus at the same time.

In the novel, the fate of all the Dwarves who survived the Hobbit is told. Gimli originally comes to Rivendell to accompany his father Gloin; Gloin is a Dwarf who took part in Bilbo's adventure and has come to inform the Elves that Sauron's servants are looking for Bilbo. Gimli is ultimately chosen so that the Dwarves are also represented in the Fellowship of the Ring. Balin, whose tomb they find in Moria, had also taken part in that adventure; most of the other surviving Dwarves had accompanied Balin and were killed because of the Orcs and the Balrog.

The scream of the Nazgûl was voiced by co-writer and producer Fran Walsh.

Tom Bombadil is a character who is in the book but did not make it into the film. He rescues Frodo and Sam from a malevolent willow tree after they leave the Shire. Jackson initially considered using Bombadil in a cameo scene: as the Hobbits walk through the forest they see a man with a feathered hat darting among the trees, then hear Tom singing and start running through the forest. However, production ran out of time to shoot this scene. Instead, in the extended version of The Two Towers, a small nod to Bombadil is made in the scene where Treebeard rescues Merry and Pippin from the roots of a sentient tree.

Liv Tyler had never read the book when she was offered a role in the trilogy. She quickly studied Middle-earth lore and even learned a little Elvish.

In Boromir's death scene, a choir singing in Elvish is heard in the subtitles. The translation of the lyrics is taken from the books: 'I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory; I love only that which they defend.'

In the scene of Elrond's Council, leaves fall continuously, implying that the meeting is being held outdoors. For this, half a dozen crew members dropped leaves onto the set at regular intervals. The production department had to collect a large number of bags of leaves in autumn; because dead leaves quickly turned brown, each leaf had to be painted.

Every actor in this film wore a wig; the only exception was Peter Jackson's young son, Billy Jackson. The hair of the child who listens wide-eyed to the story Bilbo tells at his birthday party was perfect Hobbit hair.

In close-ups of the Ring, a muffled voice is sometimes heard murmuring something. This voice belongs to Sauron, and the words he speaks in the Black Speech of Mordor are 'One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.' It is also Sauron who speaks to Frodo when he puts on the Ring.

To make the forced perspective more interesting, the filmmakers developed a new system consisting of a pulley and a platform. When the camera moved, the actors moved too, and the perspective (a seven-foot Gandalf, four-foot hobbits) always stayed correct. They also used props in three different sizes for interaction with characters of different sizes.

If you watch the extended versions back to back, they run a total of 681 minutes (11 hours 21 minutes; nearly half a day).

The trilogy's total budget was 300 million dollars, with another 200 million spent on promotion and marketing.

Although Bill the pony appears in the novel, the screenwriters initially decided not to include him during the Fellowship's journey, for the simple logistical reason of transporting a horse deep into the mountains. In difficult shots, the problem was solved with a classic pantomime trick: two people posing as a horse, one in front and one behind.

New Line Cinema had asked for a two-minute prologue. What they got ran seven and a half minutes.

In one of the most hidden references to the book, Bilbo proudly tells Gandalf that Frodo is 'a Baggins, not some blockheaded Bracegirdle from Hardbottle.' The relative knocking at the door in this scene, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, is the one stated in the book to have been born a Bracegirdle from Hardbottle.

While Frodo is leafing through Bilbo's book in Rivendell, a page written in dwarf runes appears. The runes translate as: 'Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks and the setting sun with the last light of Durin's Day will shine upon the keyhole.' This is in fact a direct copy of a map from the book The Hobbit, and the runes describe the secret entrance to the Lonely Mountain. On another page Frodo turns, there is a drawing of two swords on one page and a key on the other. Although they look different from their counterparts in the film, these swords are Glamdring and Orcrist, which Bilbo and the Dwarves found in the troll cave. The key is the one used to enter the stone trolls' treasure in the novel The Hobbit; this event did not appear in the film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

About twenty-eight separate Hobbit holes had to be built for the Shire. Each one had to be different.

The battle scene at the summit was shot during a heat wave in which the temperature exceeded 38°C. Many of the actors playing the Uruk-Hai were carried off set with heat stroke.

Sir Ian Holm had voiced Frodo Baggins in the 1981 BBC Radio adaptation; in the films he played Bilbo.

The rings in different sizes used in the films were made by a jeweler in Nelson, New Zealand. The largest and smallest rings are open to public viewing.

James Horner was considered for the film's score but was busy with A Beautiful Mind. The choice of Howard Shore caused surprise because he was known for dark thrillers and had not worked on an epic of this scale. Both were nominated for an Oscar; Shore won his first Academy Award for this film.

The plan was to cast large actors for the hobbits and shrink them with visual effects, but when the effect was applied, actors who were 1.80 cm did not look right. So the hobbit actors' average height was around 1.68 cm.

The scene in which Aragorn fights the Nazgûl at Weathertop was Viggo Mortensen's first day on set, and he was using a sword for the first time in his life.

Jackson's children Billy and Katherine are credited in the credits as 'Cute Hobbit Children.'

The New Zealand Army was to appear as extras in the large battle scenes but withdrew due to a peacekeeping mission in East Timor.

In the prologue, one of the most famous Middle-earth artists can be seen as one of the nine human kings.

Some customers in the Prancing Pony walk on stilts to emphasize the height difference with the hobbits.

Sean Bean wore a fiberglass body suit under his costume in his death scene, so that the arrows were prevented from wobbling.

The Elves speak Sindarin, an artificial language influenced by Welsh.

In the 'Concerning Hobbits' prologue on the extended DVD, there is a brief moment in which Sam plants a bunch of flowers with a root ball. This is the only place in the trilogy where Sam is seen gardening.

Sean Astin's underwater scene was actually shot in a dry studio with fans rippling his sail; the water effects were added later.

The spell Arwen speaks while fleeing the Black Riders is not subtitled. According to the Encyclopedia of Arda, she says: 'Nîn o Hithaeglir lasto beth daer; rimmo nîn Bruinen dan in Ulaer,' meaning 'Waters of the Hithaeglir, hear the word of power; rush, waters of the Bruinen, against the Nazgûl!'

The illuminated door opening into the Mines of Moria was painted with the substance used in cat's eye and road signs.

While the Fellowship hides from the crows on the hills, Gandalf says 'Spies of Saruman!' In the first take, Sir Ian McKellen joked and said 'Spies of Star Wars!'

For the music of the chase in Moria, Howard Shore wanted a heavy hymn and chose a Maori choir.

Enya's lyricist Roma Ryan learned Elvish for the two songs she contributed to the film.

Sir Christopher Lee broke his left hand by striking it against a hotel door. This injury is clearly visible in the scene where Saruman mocks the Fellowship's ordeal at Caradhras.

Dominic Monaghan wore a fat suit made of foam for the role of Merry and drank three liters of water a day to avoid dehydration.

Gollum looks different in this film than in later productions, because programming problems meant the scenes were shot according to an early design from before Andy Serkis was cast. He appears only in brief glimpses, partly because of this inconsistency and partly to make the audience curious before his introduction in The Two Towers. In the Extended DVD commentary, Peter Jackson joked that he would enjoy making a "Special Edition" in which the inconsistency could be fixed.

David Bowie expressed interest in the role of Elrond, but Peter Jackson said, "The collision of a famous and beloved character with a famous star would be a little uncomfortable."

When the trailer was released online on 7 April 2001, it was downloaded 1.6 million times in the first twenty-four hours.

The Tolkien estate never supported Peter Jackson's film adaptation, but there was nothing they could do, since J.R.R. Tolkien had sold the rights in 1968 for $15,000. Tolkien's grandson Simon Tolkien supported the production and, according to some sources, was rejected by his relatives, but Simon's father Christopher Tolkien denied this. Despite the trilogy's success, relations remained tense: before the Hobbit films, New Line, Jackson and the Tolkien family had legal problems; when Amazon bought the novel rights for its own series in 2018, one of the estate's two conditions was that the series could not remake the films, and the other was that Jackson could not be directly involved.

The map Gandalf picks up in Bilbo's study is a copy of the map J.R.R. Tolkien drew for the book "The Hobbit." The map belongs to Erebor, the Lonely Mountain, and plays an important role in Jackson's trilogy based on that book.

At the birthday party, Bilbo says "Proudfoots," and a hobbit in the foreground with large feet shouts "Proudfeet." The shot was deliberately framed as a tribute to the 1978 animated film that introduced Jackson to Tolkien's works.

The orcs' voices were partly recordings of elephant seal pups at the Marine Mammal Center in California.

The film does not explicitly state why only the nine Kings of Men were corrupted, and not the Elves or the Dwarves. According to the books, the Elves had made their own three rings and Sauron could not corrupt them, only see their thoughts. The Dwarf lords were largely immune to the enslaving effects of their seven rings, but the rings awakened an overwhelming greed in them; the film touches on this partly when Elrond says, "Dwarves toil in caves, they seek wealth. They care nothing for the troubles of others."

Gandalf has clearly existed for ages; but a fact the film does not state is that all the Wizards came to Middle-earth from Valinor, about 1000 years after Sauron's first defeat at the end of the Second Age. None of them took part in the Last Alliance of Men and Elves, which explains why no wizard is present in the prologue.

Set security was tight; at least three people were arrested for attempted trespassing.

Bret McKenzie made a silent cameo as an elf in the Council of Elrond scene. His attractive character was noticed by fans, who named him "Figwit" (short for "Frodo is great... who is that?!?"). His internet fame was so great that Peter Jackson brought him back in The Return of the King with two lines of dialogue.

The film's climax interweaves the last chapter of the first book (Boromir trying to take the Ring, Frodo leaving the Fellowship) with the first chapter of the second book (Boromir's death, Merry and Pippin's capture, Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas setting off in pursuit).

This film remained among the top ten highest-grossing films in the US for thirteen weeks.

Unlike in the original Tolkien, Gandalf's sword Glamdring does not glow near orcs and is never named. In the Extended Edition commentary, Jackson and Philippa Boyens joked that "budget cuts" led to there not being enough blue left. However, the commentary on one of the Hobbit films explained that a glowing Glamdring would look too much like a lightsaber.

Bilbo's cake caught fire just as he was about to leave the party, but Ian Holm bravely completed the scene.

The voices of the Black Riders (heard when they arrive in the Shire and when Arwen carries Frodo across the river) were provided by Andy Serkis.

New Line Cinema asked Jackson to prepare 25 minutes of the film to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2001. Jackson said they wanted to discourage the negative press surrounding the trilogy, which was seen as a big gamble for the studio. He chose the Mines of Moria sequence for the festival; some of the cast were present and saw the finished footage for the first time.

Usually, when a director comes to watch the daily footage on a feature film, about twenty to twenty-five minutes of footage is viewed. On this film, because of the number of different units shooting at the same time, the daily footage ran about three to four hours.

The large trees in the forest of Lothlorien were made of rubber.

Peter Jackson's first choices for Aragorn were Daniel Day-Lewis and Russell Crowe. Crowe was warm to the idea of starring in a big film in New Zealand but could not commit because of his schedule in the US. Crowe had lived in New Zealand until he was four years old.

Lawrence Makoare could barely see anything in his Lurtz makeup. When he could not hold back his punches while fighting Aragorn hand to hand, Viggo Mortensen chose to respond with the same realism; the blows were all real.

Patrick Stewart was offered the role of Gandalf but turned it down because he did not like the script.

The water used on the Rivendell set was chlorinated. Thanks to a watertight system, the chlorinated water did not seep into the soil and did not pollute the natural water. When filming ended, the water was collected again.

Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, renamed itself 'Middle-earth' for the film's premiere.

Scenes too complex to convey in storyboards were prepared with computer previsualization. Peter Jackson took tips on this from George Lucas and Rick McCallum; when he returned to New Zealand, he hired recent graduate digital artists for the job.

Cate Blanchett shot for only one month for the role of Galadriel.

Liv Tyler was afraid to drive in New Zealand because she was used to right-hand traffic in the US. She often called on Orlando Bloom to drive her around; Bloom was familiar with driving on the left in England.

During one take of the Buckleberry Ferry scene, a large splinter pierced Dominic Monaghan's prosthetic foot and lodged in his real foot. While the crew removed the splinter, Monaghan bragged about how big it was, but in the end it turned out to be small. Billy Boyd made a habit of teasing him with splinters. Monaghan still keeps the splinter.

Apart from the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, there is no curve or circle in the architecture of Moria; there are only polygons.

Arwen uses the sword Hadhafang, which her father Elrond wielded against Sauron 3000 years earlier.

Ian McKellen teased Ian Holm by telling him that the old-age makeup made him look like Judi Dench's mother.

Peter Jackson keeps the entire Bag End set in storage.

The Uruk-Hai leader Lurtz is not in the books; Boromir is killed by a group of unnamed Orcs. Lurtz was created for the film to give the Uruk-Hai a face. His name is never spoken in the film, only heard in the credits and in the Extended Edition from Saruman's mouth.

The cave troll's roar is made up of walrus, tiger and horse sounds. Peter Jackson designed the troll not as inherently evil but as a somewhat stupid and innocent child; 'I would imagine that the troll had a mother and that she was waiting for him, and that always upset me,' he said.

The four hobbit actors went into makeup at 5 a.m. and stood for an hour and a half while the prosthetic feet were attached. Sean Astin's makeup artist was named Sean Foot.

Ian McKellen enjoyed playing Gandalf the Grey more than Gandalf the White. Fortunately, he also played Gandalf the Grey in The Hobbit trilogy.

Every day of filming, 1,460 eggs were served to the cast and crew at breakfast.

Because of jetlag, Christopher Lee nearly cut off two fingers of his left hand while feeling for the bathroom in the dark of his hotel room at night. Peter Jackson worked around the injury by keeping his left hand out of frame and postponing scenes. Lee said that thanks to Ian McKellen's support, he got through the pain.

One of the stunt performers dislocated his shoulder in the scene where the hobbits roll down the hill after stealing vegetables. It was the first day of filming.

Viggo Mortensen said that filming of the trilogy was technically completed in December 2000, but that they had gone over budget, so they had to do expensive reshoots of low-quality footage for the second and third films.

In close-ups of the Ring, the fingers draw attention. In some scenes the cuticles and nails are well-groomed, while in others they are quite rough. The latter are Elijah Wood's hands; he has a habit of biting his nails.

While Bilbo makes tea for Gandalf, he mentions 'cold chicken and pickles.' This is a reference to Gandalf asking Bilbo for cold chicken and pickles in the book 'The Hobbit.'

Fans paid 39.95 dollars for the chance to have their names appear in the long credits of the Special Edition.

Sir Ian McKellen initially turned down the role of Gandalf because of a scheduling conflict with X-Men (2000).

When Gandalf and the others leap across the stairwell while fleeing the Balrog in Moria, the arrows fired by the goblins appear to flex. This is not an accidental effect; the arrows really move that way and achieve balanced flight through the gyroscopic effect. The fact that one of Legolas's arrows does not flex may suggest that elf arrows are magical or that the filmmakers wanted to avoid a distracting element.

According to director Sir Peter Jackson, the opening of the film was the hardest part. During editing, he had prepared a long prologue recounting the history of Middle-earth in an accelerated way, but this prologue nearly collapsed under a pile of information and names. Jackson decided to remove the prologue entirely and open the film with Bilbo's monologue about Hobbits, spreading the background information throughout Gandalf's dialogue. However, when New Line watched the finished film, they found the beginning confusing and insisted on a short prologue despite Jackson's wishes. After production ended and while Jackson was recording the music with Howard Shore in London, Jackson and editor John Gilbert holed up in a corner with an Avid machine and hastily assembled a prologue from footage he had initially abandoned. To keep the work manageable, they told the prologue from the perspective of the One Ring, and a 7-minute prologue emerged that New Line reluctantly accepted. The Bilbo monologue Jackson had planned was cut from the theatrical version, but it appeared in the Extended Edition as the 'Concerning Hobbits' scene.

Large quantities of hair were imported into New Zealand for all the wigs. Russian women were found who cut their hair and sold it to the filmmakers.

In each film of the trilogy, the film's subtitle is spoken as dialogue. In this film, Elrond says: 'So be it. You shall be the Fellowship of the Ring.'

Production designer Grant Major oversaw the translation of all the writing on Balin's tomb into Dwarvish. A Tolkien scholar who later visited was upset to see the phrase 'Joe was here' among the inscriptions. Major was horrified, and they scanned the contents of the tomb but found nothing. It turned out to be a joke by a crew carpenter. Curious fans later posted screenshots and translations of the Moria walls; the runes read 'John was here' and 'Made in New Zealand'. During pre-production, Weta artists asked Tolkien expert Michael Martinez whether the book contained any example of Orc graffiti. Martinez found the passage in which Frodo, Sam and Gollum see a defaced statue in Gondor and argued that Orcs could have scratched graffiti in runes onto the walls of Moria.

The bridge in Hobbiton was built from polystyrene by the New Zealand Army.

The New Zealand government struck a new tax agreement when New Line Cinema threatened to shoot the production elsewhere.

Perfecting the design of the hobbits' feet took more than a year. More than eighteen feet were produced for the four lead Hobbits, and attaching each pair to the actors' real feet took about an hour and a half.

While filming the scenes on the Anduin River, Orlando Bloom and John Rhys-Davies were swept off their boats.

During Bilbo's party, Pippin can be seen in a group playing guitar.

Elijah Wood put on knee-length trousers and a flowing shirt and went up into the hills to shoot his audition tape. His friend George Huang directed the video.

The portraits hanging above the fireplace at Bag End, depicting Frodo's deceased parents, are based on the likenesses of director Sir Peter Jackson and writer Dame Fran Walsh, who are a couple in real life.

The development of a live-action adaptation of 'The Lord of the Rings' dates back to 1957, when Hugo Award-winning science fiction magazine editor Forrest J. Ackerman persuaded J.R.R. Tolkien to attempt an adaptation. In the more than forty years before Sir Peter Jackson made the trilogy, Sir John Boorman, Stanley Kubrick and The Beatles had either attempted or shown interest in their own adaptations.

John Howe, renowned as one of the great artists of J.R.R. Tolkien's works, was brought in to work on the production and was given the task of designing the Moria Orcs.

This film was the first to receive the American Film Institute's Movie of the Year Award.

Peter Jackson first considered Sylvester McCoy for the role of Bilbo Baggins; McCoy later played Radagast in The Hobbit trilogy.

Twenty of the extended version's thirty-minute credits were devoted to founding members of the official fan club; the list includes Jackson, Wood, Astin, Monaghan, Boyd, McKellen, Mortensen and others.

The film is one of five to have topped the IMDb Top 250; the others are The Godfather (1972), Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Dark Knight (2008).

In the book, Gandalf solves the riddle at the entrance to Moria, while in the film this task is given to Frodo.

Weta Workshop produced fifty-eight miniatures so detailed that they were called 'bigatures'. Jackson was proud that they looked realistic even in close-up.

Co-producer Rick Porras's wedding ring served as the model for the One Ring.

Galadriel's home in Lothlórien was the largest miniature set built for the trilogy.

The cast wore Pounamu bracelets, native to New Zealand, at the Academy Awards. Maggie Smith saw McKellen's bracelet and asked what it meant; McKellen said 'good luck'. After the awards, when McKellen did not win, Smith teased, 'It didn't work, did it?'

Christopher Lee was Jackson's first choice for the role of Saruman; however, because of his age, Tim Curry, Jeremy Irons and Malcolm McDowell were also considered. Lee reprised the role in both the trilogy and The Hobbit films.

The total crew exceeded 3,000 people, about 300 of whom were in the art department.

The Beatles wanted to appear in an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings and offered Stanley Kubrick the directing job. Kubrick turned it down, saying the book was unfilmable. The cast was to have McCartney as Frodo, Harrison as Gandalf, Starr as Samwise and Lennon as Gollum.

The three trolls turned to stone in The Hobbit can be seen in the background of the scene where Frodo and his companions rest after escaping from the Fire Mountain.

At the film's first screening, a rumor arose that a car was visible in the scene where Sam says 'the furthest point from home'. Although Jackson said he had examined every frame and that there was no car, editor John Gilbert admitted in a DVD documentary that there was one. Jackson acknowledged the car in a later interview.

In the extended version commentary, Orlando Bloom described what he played in close-up on his face during the lament montage after Gandalf's fall as 'Death Is a Very Strange Thing': as an elf, he was witnessing the death of a friend for the first time.

Sauron's giant eye and armored giant form are largely inventions of the film. In the novel Sauron is never seen directly; Gollum mentions four fingers on a black hand. Jackson admitted he had misinterpreted the eye element.

Hugo Weaving shot the scene in which Elrond speaks with Gandalf just after recovering from the flu; according to co-writer Philippa Boyens, his hoarse voice strengthened the performance.

Jackson wanted Lucy Lawless for Galadriel and Uma Thurman for Arwen; when both became pregnant, the roles went to Cate Blanchett and Liv Tyler. Thurman was also considered for Éowyn, but Miranda Otto was chosen; Jackson's first choice, Alison Doody, was also pregnant.

It is the only trilogy with all three films on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 best films of all time.

In the scene where Frodo turns to the camera while mourning Gandalf in Moria, Jackson told Elijah Wood, 'Make the pain frightening.'

Liv Tyler left her prosthetic ears on her car's dashboard; when she returned, they had melted.

Dominic Monaghan was battling hay fever while filming the cornfield scene.

Peter Jackson was worried that New Line Cinema executives would object to the amount of smoking in the film. Jokingly, he said that if there were an objection, he would rewrite Gandalf as someone who had recently quit smoking and sucked on candy to control his addiction. Fortunately for the producers, there was no objection to the smoking.

Liam Neeson turned down the role of Boromir.

In June 2008, it ranked number two on the American Film Institute's list of the ten best films in the 'Fantasy' genre.

Ian Holm was Jackson's first choice for the role of Bilbo Baggins.

In the book, it is Frodo who raids Farmer Maggot's fields; years earlier as a child, he had stolen mushrooms from the farm.

Tolkien began a sequel set 200 years after the events of The Lord of the Rings. Titled 'The New Shadow', the book was to tell of the rise of a demonic cult in the world of men under King Eldarion (Aragorn's son). However, he wrote only 10-15 pages and abandoned the project.

In the Mines of Moria, the battery for Ian McKellen's illuminated staff was hidden among the folds of his robe.

Applying the full costume and makeup for Lawrence Makoare's role as Lurtz took eleven hours, and removing it took four and a half hours.

John Howe designed Bag End to look like a perfect English home, but he had never been to England before.

Sean Astin's stepfather, John Astin, had been considered for the role of Gandalf. He had previously worked with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh on 'The Frighteners' (1996) and had been impressed by their passion for cinema. This led Sean Astin to pursue the role of Sam.

Jake Gyllenhaal auditioned for the role of Frodo.

During Bilbo's farewell speech at the party, Dominic Monaghan read the speech for the hobbits' reaction shots.

The city Gandalf visits while searching for information about the ring after his birthday party is Minas Tirith, shown extensively in 'The Return of the King' (2003). Jackson briefly considered identifying this location with an on-screen caption but decided against it.

A scene in which the Fellowship escapes the Uruk-Hai by river currents was abandoned after the set was washed out by extreme flooding in the Queenstown area. A similar scene appeared in 'The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug' (2013).

Bilbo's party was supposed to have one hundred and forty-four Hobbits, but due to budget constraints there were only one hundred.

In the Extended Edition, Galadriel gives Merry and Pippin blades she calls 'Noldoli daggers'. The term 'Noldoli' was briefly used in Tolkien's early work 'The Book of Lost Tales' to describe the Noldor Elves. In these works, he borrowed folkloric names for creatures such as Elves, Dwarves, Giants and Goblins. However, its use here is quite ambiguous.

Peter Jackson had read Tolkien's novel only once before deciding to adapt it, and that was after seeing Ralph Bakshi's criticized animated version (1978). Some shots in Jackson's live-action trilogy were visibly influenced by scenes from Bakshi's version.

The Chief Ringwraith's horse, a black Thoroughbred gelding, was bought by an American rider and began a competitive career in three-day eventing under the name 'Frodo Baggins'.

Elijah Wood never wore a full Mithril chainmail shirt, only the upper half.

Weta Workshop produced more than 45,000 items for the trilogy, from prosthetics to armor.

Bilbo Baggins's scenes in Hobbiton were shot in front of a green screen; Sir Ian Holm never worked on location.

Peter Jackson took many scenes directly from Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated adaptation.

There is a hidden trailer on the four-disc DVD: go to 'Official Fan Club Credits' in the second disc's chapter index and press the down button, and The Two Towers icon appears. The same trailer is also available on the Blu-ray.

When author Brian Sibley visited the set, he and co-writer Fran Walsh discovered they were distant cousins; both had common ancestors buried in New Zealand.

Cate Blanchett joked that she accepted the role of Galadriel because 'I always wanted pointy ears'; after filming, she was allowed to keep her ears.

In the scene where Frodo leafs through Bilbo's book in Rivendell, the names of the thirteen dwarves from The Hobbit are visible before he turns the page.

In the Extended Edition, Gimli mocks the Elves' hospitality; he responds to Haldir's words with 'Ishkhaqwi ai durugnul!', and Aragorn says 'That was not so courteous.' Gimli's phrase means 'I spit on your grave!'

The Mines of Moria sets were inspired by the works of Giovanni Battista Piranesi and M.C. Escher.

The chapter titles in the book 'A Long-Expected Party', 'Shortcut to Mushrooms', 'The Bridge of Khazad-dûm', 'Lothlorien' and 'The Breaking of the Fellowship' are words spoken in the story. 'Riddles in the Dark' is also mentioned; this is the title of a chapter from The Hobbit.

In the films, the shards of Narsil are kept in Rivendell and are not reforged until the middle of the third film. In the book, however, Aragorn has the broken sword when he meets the Hobbits in Bree. Jackson thought Aragorn would look foolish swinging a broken sword.

Peter Jackson wanted Russell Crowe or Daniel Day-Lewis for Aragorn; both turned it down. Crowe chose A Beautiful Mind. The two films competed at the 2002 Oscars; Fellowship won Best Makeup and Music, while A Beautiful Mind won Best Picture, Director and Screenplay.

Aragorn beheading Lurtz was not in the script; it was added on a moment of inspiration from Viggo Mortensen. Mortensen also suggested cutting off Lurtz's right arm; fortunately he parried the knife in time.

Although the film received a PG rating in the United Kingdom, a warning was added that some scenes might not be suitable for young children; it was the third film to receive this warning.

The sequence of escaping the collapsing stairs in Moria was invented at the last minute; the script only said 'They run down the stairs toward the Bridge.'

Forced perspective, scale doubles and green screen techniques were used to make the Hobbit and dwarf actors appear smaller. Because John Rhys-Davies (Gimli) was slightly taller than the Hobbit actors, he did not require separate shooting.

In the scene in Bree where the Nazgûl 'kill' the hobbits, while Peter Jackson was shooting Merry's close-up, Elijah Wood sat down on the edge of the bed and slid into frame; if watched carefully, the movement is visible.

The trilogy was voted ninth on Total Film's list of the 100 Greatest Films of All Time (November 2005).

Executive producer Mark Ordesky suggested Viggo Mortensen after seeing him in a play.

Dominic Monaghan (Merry) actually auditioned for the role of Frodo.

Howard Shore drew inspiration for the film's music from Richard Wagner's 'Ring of the Nibelung' cycle of four operas.

Bruce Willis said he was interested in the role of Boromir.

A special lighting rig was used so that Galadriel's eyes would reflect starlight. Because Galadriel was among the last elves to have seen the light of the Trees of Valinor.

Arwen has very little presence in the books: in The Fellowship of the Ring she has a brief appearance before Elrond's Council, and in The Return of the King she has a single line. It is Glorfindel, not Arwen, who takes Frodo to Rivendell. Characters such as Tom Bombadil, Radagast and Bill Ferny do not appear in the films at all.

In the extended version, Saruman tells Gandalf, 'Your love of the halfling's leaf has slowed your mind.' Yet in the books Saruman also loves Longbottom leaf and imports it from the Shire; Merry and Pippin find it in his stores in the extended version of The Two Towers.

Stanley Kubrick at one point considered directing The Lord of the Rings. His death allowed Peter Jackson to get the cast he wanted: Ian McKellen and Cate Blanchett were set to appear in Minority Report, while Kubrick's death led Spielberg to make A.I. first.

Frodo seeing the Shire burning in Galadriel's mirror is a reference to the 'Scouring of the Shire' chapter in the book. Jackson decided early on to cut this subplot from the film; only Saruman's defeat at Isengard and the vision of the Shire's ruin in the mirror remained.

The one who falls from the waterfall is a silicone replica of Sean Bean.

The film was distributed to cinemas under the title 'Changing Seasons', and the extended version under the code 'EFOTR'.

Gandalf's line to the Balrog, 'I am a servant of the Secret Fire', refers to the power of creation possessed by Eru Ilúvatar, the creator of Middle-earth. The Balrog, meanwhile, is called 'Flame of Udûn'; Udûn is Morgoth's fortress. The Secret Fire creates, the flame of Udûn destroys.

Twenty-nine Nazgûl costumes were made.

This film is not the first example of a planned trilogy being shot simultaneously. Actors in the cast had taken part in similar projects before: Christopher Lee in The Three Musketeers films; Elijah Wood in Back to the Future II and III; and Hugo Weaving and Bruce Spence in the Matrix sequels.

What Pippin drops into the well is a stone in the book, and the orcs attack a few days later. In the film, a dwarf skeleton falls, and the orcs spring into action immediately.

Johnny Vegas auditioned for the role of Samwise Gamgee. He described his performance as 'terrible'; Peter Jackson's reaction was, 'I flew from New Zealand for this.'

Tolkien drew inspiration from Norse mythology, especially the Volsung Saga. In this epic the rings are magical but not evil; the true evil is the Rhine Gold. Tolkien blended these elements to create his own story.

The Hobbits' reaction to the fireworks at Bilbo's party was actually their reaction to a flashing light and an air horn.

Liv Tyler was among the last actors cast; she joined the cast on 25 August 1999.

Tom Baker was a candidate for the role of Gandalf but turned down the offer because he did not want to spend sixteen months in New Zealand.

As the peasant who belches in front of The Prancing Pony in Bree.

'Moria' means 'foolishness' in Greek, 'black abyss' in Elvish, and 'plague' in Italian. In Dwarvish it is called 'Khazad-dûm', meaning 'Mansion of the Dwarves'.

Ralph Bakshi, director of the 1978 animated The Lord of the Rings, admitted in a 2001 interview with Empire that he was envious of Peter Jackson's trilogy.

Peter Jackson described the process of shooting the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy at once as something he would do only once in his life. He did not know that ten years later he would direct The Hobbit trilogy.

Christopher Tolkien drew the maps in the books because his father could not hire a secretary. In 1943, while serving as a fighter pilot in South Africa, he received weekly letters from his father and would read a chapter upon landing.

Peter Jackson shot the 'Proudfeet!' scene at Bilbo's birthday party as a shot-for-shot copy of the scene in Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated film. There are other tributes to Bakshi elsewhere in the film: the One Ring bouncing off the rock after Gollum, the circular shot of the four hobbits at Weathertop (in Jackson's version the camera is faster and Aragorn is absent), and the Nazgûl bending down as the hobbits hide under a root by the roadside. The Nazgûl's attack on the hobbits' room at the Prancing Pony is also taken from Bakshi; in the book, however, Aragorn says the Nazgûl will not attack directly and that the attackers are Bree-folk under their influence.

In the prologue, three Elven ring-bearers are seen: Galadriel, Gil-galad and Círdan. In the book, Gil-galad dies in the war against Sauron and is later remembered; in the film he is seen only once more in the prologue (played by Mark Ferguson, his death scene cut, and he is not named). Círdan is played by Michael Elsworth, who is uncredited. In the book, Círdan and Elrond beg Isildur to destroy the Ring; in the film this role is given to Elrond alone. Elsworth also appears as a Gondorian archivist during Gandalf's research and in a brief shot of Círdan in The Return of the King (again uncredited).

The story Bilbo tells at his birthday party about the giant trolls appears in The Hobbit.

1,800 Hobbit feet were produced for the production.

Gandalf tells Elrond that their hope of defeating Sauron must rest on Men. Elrond says that Men are weak and that the blood of Númenor is all but spent. Númenor was an island given by the Valar to the Men who helped them defeat Morgoth. Over time the Númenóreans grew powerful and, under Sauron's influence, became corrupted and rebelled against the Valar. Their armies were crushed and the island sank; only a few uncorrupted families survived. Led by their king Elendil and his son Isildur, they founded Gondor and Arnor. A century later they helped the Elves defeat Sauron, but Isildur's refusal to destroy the Ring allowed evil to endure.

When his relatives knock on his door, Bilbo says 'I am not at home.' 'Not at Home' is also a chapter title in The Hobbit.

Sir Anthony Hopkins and Kate Winslet turned down roles in the trilogy.

The lyrics of the song "A Knife in the Dark" are in the fictional language Adunaic. The English translation reflects the minds of the Nazgûl: 'We deny our maker. We cling to the darkness. We crave power and glory for ourselves. We come now, the Nine, Lords of Eternal Life. The earth groans... and the wind weeps!'

The Eye of Sauron appears on the breast harnesses of the Nazgûl's horses.

Peter Jackson's vision was initially backed by Harvey Weinstein; a cheap two-film version was planned: The Fellowship of the Ring and The War of the Ring. Jackson knew this would not work and sabotaged the project by leaking the scripts in order to take it from Miramax to New Line Cinema. At Ain't It Cool News, Drew McWeeny read the scripts and wrote 'Too short, it should be three films and it needs a big budget'; this caused a stir and made Jackson's job easier. The series eventually moved to New Line.

Warwick Davis, Timothy Spall and Robert Trebor auditioned for the role of Gimli.

Sir Sam Neill was considered for the role of Gandalf.

Stunt performer Lani Jackson doubled for Arwen in some fight scenes cut from the film. She also appeared as various orc doubles in the trilogy.

The easter egg Lord of the Piercing (2002), MTV's parody of the Council of Elrond, is not included in the UK version of the four-disc set. This is because the BBFC required the set to receive a '12' certificate instead of a 'PG'. For the same reason, some profanity was cut from one of the documentaries.

While the Fellowship is in Lothlórien, Boromir says his father Denethor is 'a noble man'. Denethor was played by John Noble in The Two Towers and The Return of the King.

As Gandalf reads Isildur's account, he begins with 'the year 3434 of the Second Age'. This is not elaborated on in the films, but the history of Middle-earth is divided into ages: the First Age, from the creation of the Elves to the defeat of Morgoth; the Second Age, from the rise of Sauron and the creation of the Rings of Power to the Last Alliance; the Third Age, from Sauron's re-emergence to the destruction of the Ring; and the Fourth Age, which corresponds to what follows. The prologue takes place in the Second Age, and the rest of the film in the Third Age.

Soria Moria Castle is a name taken from a Norwegian fairy tale. J.R.R. Tolkien acknowledged that this name (in sound, not in meaning) inspired the Mines of Moria.

Bernard Hill was considered for the role of Gandalf, but went on to play King Théoden in the following two films.

Sir Billy Connolly was considered for the role of Gimli; he later played Dáin II Ironfoot in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014).

Christopher Plummer turned down the role of Gandalf due to the long shooting commitment.

In August 2002, the film's home video set a record in the United Kingdom with 2.4 million sales.

Sauron's War of Conquest in the prologue summarizes the centuries-long conflicts in The Silmarillion: it begins with the War of Gwathló, Sauron is driven into Mordor, and after 1,400 years he grows strong again and the War of the Last Alliance breaks out. Within five years the Free Peoples defeat Sauron at Dagorlad, and after a seven-year siege of Barad-dûr, Isildur defeats Sauron in a duel. According to the book, Sauron's body is left soulless and falls to the foundations of the tower.

In the French version, the names were translated with medieval French names as in the books: Frodo and Bilbo Baggins became 'Frodon et Bilbon Sacquet'; the Shire became 'La Comté'; Rivendell became 'Fondcombe'.

Tom Wilkinson was offered a role in the trilogy but turned it down, thinking the sixteen-month production would keep him away from his family. Instead, he appeared in In the Bedroom (2001), which competed against this film at the 2002 Oscars in the Best Picture and Best Screenplay categories; neither film won.

When Gandalf meets Bilbo at Bag End, Bilbo takes his hat and staff and says, 'Tea, or perhaps something stronger? There's a bottle from the Old Winyards laid down in 1296, nearly as old as I am!' According to Tolkien's calendar, 1296 in the Hobbit calendar corresponds to 2896 of the Third Age; Bilbo's farewell feast takes place in 1401 (Third Age 3001).

Merry and Pippin knock Boromir to the ground while he teaches them to fight; later, while protecting him from the Uruk-hai, they take down an enemy with a similar move.

In 2007, the American Film Institute named this film the 50th Greatest Movie of All Time; it was the most recently released film on the list.

Contrary to popular belief, illustrator John Howe did not make a cameo as one of the nine Kings of Men in the prologue; according to Daniel Falconer of Weta Workshop, the kings were played by Alan Lee and Larry Rew.

The origin of the Uruk-Hai is unclear in Tolkien; at one point he suggested they were Orc-Man hybrids. For the depiction in the films, Peter Jackson drew inspiration from Tolkien's description of Orcs 'coming out of the ground like maggots.' Although the film implies that Saruman created them, in the books they are assumed to have been bred by Sauron centuries earlier. The behind-the-scenes books confirm that Saruman copied Sauron's methods and that the Mordor Uruk-Hai had rougher features.

Helena Bonham Carter expressed interest in the role of Arwen.

At the beginning of the film, Isildur refuses to destroy the Ring, then is struck three times in the back while fleeing an orc attack with the Ring. At the end, Boromir tries to take the Ring from Frodo, realizes his mistake, charges at the orcs to redeem himself, and is struck three times in the front.

In 2021, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, deemed 'culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.'

It is the only film in the trilogy to receive a PG rating in New Zealand.

Bill Bailey auditioned for the role of Gimli.

Elijah Wood was the first actor to join the cast, on July 7, 1999.

The Nazgûl scream was created by foley artists rubbing two plastic party cups together to form the base sound and then adding effects; the sound was both alien and organic, achieved with a few cents' worth of materials.

On the WTF With Marc Maron podcast, James Corden said his first film audition was for the role of Samwise Gamgee.

Ian McKellen was the only actor among the Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominees whose nominated film was also in the Best Picture category.

The Hobbiton set had exactly forty-seven chimneys.

This was the only film in the trilogy that was not the highest-grossing film worldwide; Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone surpassed it.

More than 1,600 prosthetic feet and ears were used in the production; each was individually shaped and sized, and because they were removed at the end of the day, none could be used more than once. A special foam latex oven ran 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The actors' foot hair was regularly shaved so the latex would adhere. Discarded feet were broken apart to prevent theft.

Orlando Bloom was paid $175,000 for the entire trilogy.

In the extended version, there was a Hobbit couple about to kiss; however, the other one was eating a cake.

When the Balrog begins chasing the fellowship, Gandalf tells Aragorn that 'swords are of no use here.' About 2 minutes later, when the Balrog attacks, his sword vanishes.

The producers approached Liv Tyler after her performance in Plunkett & Macleane, and New Line Cinema did not pass up the opportunity.

The 'Dies irae' music is heard in the scene where the Ring tempts Bilbo one last time. After it becomes clear that the Ring is dangerous, his slowly opening his hand and dropping the Ring to the ground conveys a sense of weight. It is also heard again in the scene where the Nazgûl corner the Hobbits at Weathertop and as the motif of the Isengard forces.

Although the books were published as a trilogy, the films were initially planned as two 'Lord of the Rings' films preceding 'The Hobbit.' The plans changed when Jackson brought the project to New Line Cinema; the previous studio, Miramax, had wanted to cover the trilogy as a 'duology.'

Although the books are often called 'novels,' Tolkien preferred to call them 'heroic romances.' The two terms are not mutually exclusive; the latter is a subgenre of the former.

Early in the film, while four Hobbits hide under a grassy bank, a black rider approaches above them. There is a gap between the tree on the right of the screen and the path, and the rider would have to pass through this gap, but he does not. This may be a deliberate choice to show the supernatural abilities of the Nazgûl.

Among the four actors who play the main Hobbits, the oldest is Billy Boyd. However, the character he plays, Pippin, is the youngest of the four Hobbits.

Producer Tim Sanders left the project after principal photography began.

Nicolas Cage turned down the role of Aragorn due to family obligations.

The moth was a Polyphemus moth.

Jackson initially planned to adapt the book 'The Hobbit' as the first film of a trilogy; the other two films would be adapted from 'The Lord of the Rings'. The Hobbit eventually became three films: An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies.

About 78% of the Super 35 film (3,100 shots) was color graded at Colorfront in New Zealand using 5D Colossus software; it was first scanned at full 2K resolution with an Imagica XE scanner. The graded shots were then recorded onto Kodak 5242 intermediate film with two Arri Laser film recorders. Because only 78% of the film was digital, a digital anamorphic print could not be made for the entire film. The digital shots were recorded onto a hard-matted internegative at 1.77:1, combined with the non-digital original negative and printed onto 2.39:1 anamorphic Kodak film with an optical printer at Deluxe. Fuji 3519-D was used for release prints.

In the prologue, to the left of Gil-galad and Galadriel, Círdan the Shipwright and an archivist who accompanies Gandalf all the way to the archives in Minas Tirith can be seen.

The 'Concerning Hobbits' melody that introduces the Shire is heard again at the end of the film in the 'The Breaking of the Fellowship' section.

Tolkien's Christian symbolism is subtly carried into the film: as the Fellowship leaves Lothlórien, Galadriel in white robes makes a blessing gesture reminiscent of statues of the Virgin Mary. Jackson bows respectfully to Tolkien: the film opens in complete darkness and Cate Blanchett's voice begins speaking Elvish. Because in Tolkien, languages come first, then the peoples who speak them and their stories. In the beginning was the word.

It appears on the '1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die' list compiled by Steven Schneider.

Sir Christopher Lee took on a similar role in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith) as Count Dooku: a former Jedi who turned to the Dark Side and Darth Sidious's apprentice.

Robin Atkin Downes and Jason Carter auditioned for the role of Aragorn.

Peter O'Toole, Patrick McGoohan and Sir Nigel Hawthorne turned down the role of Gandalf. Hawthorne had health problems and died a week after the first film's release.

On its release it became the fifth highest-grossing film worldwide; ahead of it were Titanic, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, The Phantom Menace and Jurassic Park.

Elijah Wood and Andy Serkis each received one million dollars for the trilogy.

The first firework Gandalf sets off at Bilbo's birthday party briefly takes the shape of a beautiful tree, then turns into glittering jewels. Considering that Tolkien's universe was inspired by Norse mythology, it is possible that the tree shape was inspired by Yggdrasil.

Howard Shore's 'The Lord of the Rings' music was voted first on the Movie Music Hall of Fame list determined by listener votes by the UK radio station Classic FM in 2023.

The mark on Lurtz's face is an inverted version of Saruman's hand.

The film features two actors who played James Bond villains: Sir Christopher Lee (The Man with the Golden Gun) and Sean Bean (GoldenEye). John Rhys-Davies, meanwhile, played a Bond ally (The Living Daylights).

Gandalf does not carry his sword Glamdring with him when he goes to the Shire; otherwise Saruman would have taken it from him. Wherever he left the sword, he has not had time to retrieve it.

The Balrog's 'human form' was initially described with muscular, distinctly humanoid interpretations. The turning point was John Howe's illustration published before the film's production; this drawing depicted the Balrog as a more animalistic and demonic creature and played a key role in the concept design. The Balrog in the film went in a similar direction: the 'human form' is only implied through its anatomy and upright stance. The fire mane running from its neck to its back and the ram's horns were also established in the early stages. Jackson and the team decided to add wings to the Balrog based on what Tolkien wrote; this choice stemmed from two short passages in The Fellowship of the Ring. Howe commented on this decision: 'Tolkien was always brief in his descriptions, so people interpret him differently. I always drew the Balrog with wings because having wings is so cool! There is a hint in the book where Tolkien says "shadows, like wings", and frankly that was my only excuse for giving it wings. He doesn't say it doesn't have wings, so why not? That was Peter's cheeky approach too: If it doesn't say it's not there, we can do it!'

Henry Cavill described the Extended Editions of 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy as his favorite films.

Sir Ian McKellen was paid a total of 13 million dollars for the first two films.

The sound effect used for the forging of orc swords in Isengard is the same as the sound used for activating a lightsaber in Star Wars.

Sir Christopher Lee was the first actor to appear in both Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings films; he played Count Dooku in Star Wars and Saruman in The Lord of the Rings. Both are similar wizard/lord characters who were once benevolent but ultimately chose evil. Later Andy Serkis followed the same path, playing Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars (he also appeared as Kino Loy in Andor). Dominic Monaghan became the third; he played Merry in The Lord of the Rings and a rebel leader in The Rise of Skywalker. However, Lee remained the only actor to appear in both a Star Wars and a Lord of the Rings film in the same year (Attack of the Clones, 2002 and The Two Towers, 2002).

Liv Tyler had the flu during filming.

According to various music sites, director Peter Jackson initially wanted the trilogy's score to be composed by the heavy metal bands Marillion or Blind Guardian. Both bands have been influenced in their music by Tolkien's epic and by Stephen King's fantasy novels.

Adrien Brody turned down a role in The Fellowship of the Ring; he later worked with Peter Jackson on King Kong (2005).

Cate Blanchett wanted to work with Peter Jackson because she was a fan of his film Braindead (1992).

Although Liv Tyler appears for only five minutes in the first film, she earned 2 million dollars; that works out to roughly 400,000 dollars per minute.

Although the producers initially thought the Watcher scene was unnecessary, Peter Jackson defended and kept it. Jackson said, 'The film needed a good monster scene at that point, so I fought for it.' When adapting the invisible tentacle attack from the novel to film, he designed the Watcher as a fully visible creature. The Weta team was first given free rein; some concepts drew inspiration from extinct creatures such as trilobites and ammonites, while the final design reflected a malevolent intelligence. Visual effects supervisor Richard Taylor said, 'We didn't want the Watcher to be just tentacles out of control; it specifically had to target Frodo, because it was after the ring.'

The film was the only production nominated for the Best Picture Oscar while also receiving nominations in the Best Original Song and Best Visual Effects categories.

Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Christopher Lee both portrayed Sherlock Holmes: McKellen in the film Mr. Holmes (2015), and Lee in three different productions. Lee also played Mycroft Holmes in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes; John Rhys-Davies, meanwhile, voiced Dr. Watson in Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes.

The film appears on Letterboxd's Official Top 250 Narrative Feature Films list.

In a 2009 interview, Kylie Minogue revealed that she had auditioned for the role of Arwen.

The cast includes four Oscar winners (Cate Blanchett, Peter Jackson, Bret McKenzie, Randall William Cook) and four Oscar nominees (Ian McKellen, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortensen, Ian Holm).

This production was Dominic Monaghan's first film.

Sean Bean was paid 250,000 dollars for his role.

It was among the 250 films nominated for the American Film Institute's 2005 AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores list.

Howard Shore was hired because he collaborated frequently with David Cronenberg. Ian Holm had previously worked with Cronenberg on Naked Lunch and eXistenZ; Viggo Mortensen later became one of Cronenberg's frequent actors (A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, A Dangerous Method).

Andy Serkis portrayed Supreme Leader Snoke in the third Star Wars trilogy. Fans believe that The Lord of the Rings influenced George Lucas's epic. Sir Christopher Lee also played Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequel trilogy.

Boromir narrowly escapes arrows in Moria (the arrows lodge in a door); this foreshadows his death by arrows at the hands of Lurtz.

The dragon firework sets a tent on fire as it passes over the party.

Weta Workshop artists appear as Dwarf Lords in the prologue.

One of the Elves at Elrond's Council.

Daniel Falconer's octopus-like concept formed the basis of the Watcher; Jackson's only requested change was that the eyes be moved upward and the mouth to the upper part of the face. Taylor said, 'The tips of the tentacles had two fingers and an opposed thumb, with squid suckers on the inner side. Its mouth was like a sphincter, and it had six large wings on its back; closed underwater, they turned into enormous wings above. We analyzed where it would get air and how it would protect its eyes. We designed the eyes as wrinkled, soft sacs that would reflect the intelligence of an old man.'

The Watcher's movements were based on cephalopods. The hardest part was coordinating the twelve tentacles as parts of a single intelligence. Valdez said, 'It was really difficult to animate all the tentacles as fluid, powerful and as if coming from a single mind.' The animation was first created with a lightweight model, then finalized with skin and muscle simulations. The skin texture was achieved with displacement maps. Software development supervisor Richard Addison-Wood said, 'Our system was much closer to reality because muscle movement was driven by skeletal movement, and skin movement was determined by the muscles.'

Compared to its introduction in the novel, the Balrog makes a far more magnificent entrance in the film. The armor of the Moria Goblins was designed to reflect the Balrog's appearance, elevating it almost like a god. As the Balrog, the Durin's Bane, approaches the scene, the cinematography shifts toward increasingly warm colors.

The Balrog's appearance was developed in stages through a series of concept maquettes. Because it would take on an ethereal look digitally, a realistic foundation was needed. The most influential artist was Ben Wooten, who was responsible for the final design. Visual effects supervisor Richard Taylor said its skeletal structure was a mix of dog and bull, and its wings were based on bat wings. It had a lizard's tail, and its horns were shaped to resemble real horn material. The 1.2-meter maquette showing the head and body of the final design was made by Wooten and Jamie Beswarick.

Accurately rendering the lava-like tissue on the Balrog's body was a major challenge. The outer surface behaved like solidified lava encasing the creature's interior. In his commentary on the film, Taylor explained: 'We wanted the Balrog's surface to be like solidified lava, turning completely black if it stayed still for a long time, but with its movements cracking the lava open to reveal a hotter molten lava mass beneath the skin. It's as if its skin flows with veins of liquid heat and fire. Its eyes glow like white embers, and when it roars, a wave of heat flows from its inner forms. We wanted its back to become a giant fiery furnace where all the energy pours out like a great mane, and its wings almost like shadows of smoke curling around it.' Gray Horsfield described the Balrog's skin as moving 'like tectonic plates.' The outer surface was defined and texture-painted by Paul Campion and Rob Shrider.

Gino Acevedo's first color schemes for the Balrog were based on dark but organic, animalistic patterns. In the end, however, it was decided that the Balrog of Moria would be a fantastical being made of lava encountered by the Fellowship deep within a mountain. This solution also answered the question of how to convey the description 'Shadow and Flame.' Set designer Grant Major said the demon 'looked as if it were made of fire, almost of lava; the environment it was in, with the mountain's foot being volcanic, inspired this fiery monster.' Taylor added: 'The skin was made of solidified, cold lava. By grounding it in this physical reality, we made the audience believe in this fantastical, strange creature.' Wooten's maquette was eventually scanned to produce a rough digital model, which was then refined by hand and completed with other anatomical components such as the wings.

Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Viggo Mortensen and Liv Tyler are the only Americans in the main cast.

While Miramax was developing the film, Morgan Freeman, Paul Scofield, David Bowie, Liam Neeson, Natascha McElhone, Claire Forlani, Francesca Annis, Max von Sydow and Sir Daniel Day-Lewis were considered for roles.

Before she began working on this film, Cate Blanchett did an uncredited voice performance in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Although she was in fact hired by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman rather than Kubrick, this made her the fourth actor to appear in both a Kubrick film and a Lord of the Rings adaptation. Kubrick's Barry Lyndon featured Andre Morell and Philip Stone, who later voiced Elrond and Theoden in Ralph Bakshi's film; and Michael Hordern, who voiced Gandalf in the BBC radio play. In the 1960s the Beatles had wanted to make and star in an adaptation and hoped Kubrick would direct. Abbey Road Studios was eventually used for the music and sound mixing of these films.

Elijah Wood and Sir Ian Holm both appeared in films about parasitic aliens: Wood in The Faculty (1998), and Holm in Alien (1979).

Sean Astin (Samwise Gamgee) and Billy Boyd (Peregrin 'Pippin' Took) appeared in The Witches of Oz (2011) and Dorothy and the Witches of Oz (2011).

In the book, the Hobbits buy the pony Bill in Bree, but this scene was not filmed. Also, while Bill is frightened by the Watcher in the Water, in the film Sam releases Bill before the Watcher appears. In the third book, the Hobbits are reunited with Bill in Bree on their way back to the Shire.

When entering the Prancing Pony inn, Frodo uses the name 'Mr. Underhill.' In the prequel The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), it is revealed that this name comes from Bilbo's encounter with the dragon Smaug: Bilbo says he came 'from under the hill,' and Smaug replies, 'Underhill?' In the Chevy Chase film Fletch (1985), Chase's character also uses the fake surname 'Underhill' while sneaking into a club, likely inspired by the Lord of the Rings novels.

Sir Christopher Lee and Hugo Weaving both played Captain America's enemies: Lee in Captain America II: Death Too Soon (1979), and Weaving in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011).

Nicole Kidman was considered for the role of Galadriel.

In a 2024 interview with Andy Cohen, Cate Blanchett joked that everyone in the cast was paid very little: 'I basically got free sandwiches.' When Cohen asked whether she received back-end points, Blanchett replied, 'No! That was way before them. No, nothing.'

The animation of the Balrog, like the film's other creatures, drew inspiration from Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion effects. The animators also wanted the Balrog's movements to be noble and intelligent. Animation supervisor Randall William Cook said: 'The Balrog, another member of the Harryhausen family, was a huge challenge. It had to be more supernatural than just a big, boring monster, and so we tried to bring a sense of nobility to its movements. It had to be a monster, but also malevolent and intelligent.' This concept had to be applied to the simulated fire and smoke erupting from the creature as well. Cook said, 'The fire needed to be animated so that it behaved dramatically.' The Weta team had to design an advanced fire and smoke simulator; they also had to find a way to give it a dramatic character. The team chose to complete most of the animation (the Balrog's actual body) before adding the fire and smoke effects, thus buying time to develop a technique that would portray them properly. Cook recounted: 'We semi-finalized the animation months before seeing the smoke, which made it difficult to know how much we needed to animate. As a result, given how much of the Balrog is covered in smoke, we put in more work than was needed. We had thought there would be a more solid shape and more definable movement. I even had a big theatrical idea that the Balrog carried a tail sweeping behind it like the train of a costume, but in the end it was just smoke.' Technical director Jim Callahan initially designed a complex physics-based fluid dynamics system and volume renderer; however, it was shelved because it was 'render intensive' and the fire it produced did not behave as dramatically as Jackson wanted. After attempts to use real gas jets as puppets failed, the team settled on a combination of practical and digital effects developed by Gray Horsfield. Horsfield explained: 'Initially I did a test, it was just a single, lumpy little cell-like thing moving down a slope. It burned and burned. I did this using sprites, which are basically images on particles. For the Balrog, we shot fire - explosions and the bursting of propane tanks, flames rippling and curling - and then we put these images into fairly primitive Maya particle systems. Each particle was a fire image doing its job. We did the same thing for smoke. In both cases the images were animated, not just still, so they evolved over time. There were many of these little sprite projections synchronized in different ways, and we layered them until they looked good. We added fire where we saw fit and removed it where it didn't work. So basically, using Maya as a compositing package, we were repositioning the fire pieces to the right place and to move in the right way.' This process significantly sped up the rendering process, allowing the team to render two frames per second.

Viggo Mortensen had previously appeared in the film G.I. Jane for director Ridley Scott. The previous two Aragorns had also worked with Scott: Robert Stephens (The Duelists) and John Hurt (Alien, which also featured Ian Holm).

Sean Bean had previously appeared in the James Bond film GoldenEye. Boromir had previously been played by Michael Graham Cox, who appeared alongside the original James Bond, Sean Connery, in A Bridge Too Far. A Bridge Too Far was also directed by Richard Attenborough, who directed Bernard Hill in Gandhi, the first film to win the Best Picture Oscar.

Sean Connery and Christopher Plummer turned down the role of Gandalf. The two actors had previously appeared together in The Man Who Would Be King. Director John Huston voiced Gandalf in The Hobbit and The Return of the King. Jack May from the cast played Theoden in the BBC Radio adaptation.

Four actors played figures from Greek mythology: Orlando Bloom - Paris in Troy (2004); John Rhys-Davies - Zeus in Goddess of Love (1988) and Priam in Helen of Troy (2003); Sean Bean - Odysseus in Troy (2004) and Zeus in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010); Sir Christopher Lee - Tiresias in The Odyssey (1997).

The Watcher's design was turned into a small-scale model, digitally scanned to obtain a rough digital model, which was then refined in Maya. As with all large-scale creatures in The Lord of the Rings films, the Watcher's animation was designed to resemble stop-motion work. Animation supervisor Adam Valdez said, 'Both Randy Cook and I come from the stop-motion world. I apprenticed under Phil Tippett for eight years and learned just about everything I know from him. So that was a factor in the classic style of the creature shots. But more importantly, it was Peter's preference. He is a big fan of classic animation, so an element of homage to Ray Harryhausen's work was included in the creature designs and sequences. Not because we aimed for a stop-motion look in the animation; rather, Peter and Randy staging the scenes with big reveals and other theatrical elements was reminiscent of the stop-motion sequences of the past.'

Peter Jackson described the Mines of Moria sequence as his favorite part of the film.

In the scene where Gandalf arrives in Hobbiton, when the wind blows his hat off, it had to be fastened to Ian McKellen's head with an elastic band.

Viggo Mortensen formed close relationships with the stunt performers and would playfully headbutt them in greeting. One night at a bar, he told stuntman Sala Baker to play a prank on Orlando Bloom; Baker refused at first but then agreed. A small red mark appeared on Bloom's head, and Mortensen said, "He had that perfect pale elf skin and he had this spot on his head."

John Rhys-Davies auditioned for the role of Denethor and was more open to that part because of the short commitment. When Gimli was offered to him, he was upset: "I've been trying to be recognized for 30 years, why would I put myself in prosthetics? Besides, who wants to spend three years shooting?" He admitted he was skeptical about the trilogy's success and expected the first film to fail and the sequels to go straight to video.

The Argonath statues were made of rigid foam at a scale of 1:60 and added to the film with blue screen. They were struck with stones to make them look old. Richard Taylor said the statues were carved from the cliff rock surrounding the river, but that a quarry was opened to build the upper sections (the arms and heads). For this reason a quarry can be seen near the Argonath, and the upper sections consist of square blocks; the seams are noticeable in close-ups.

Cate Blanchett shot all of her scenes in the trilogy in three weeks.

Russell Crowe was offered 10% of the gross for the role of Aragorn, but he turned it down when he realized Peter Jackson had another actor in mind. Crowe felt he was being pressured by the studio. Had he accepted, he would have earned about 100 million dollars.

According to Elijah Wood, Sean Astin was extremely meticulous about safety on set. Wood said, "He always had to check other people's work and make sure they were doing it right." On a helicopter trip to the mountains, Astin was giving instructions to the pilot while the others enjoyed the flight.

To make Legolas's wig sit properly, Orlando Bloom's hair was shaved into a mohawk throughout the production.

According to Dominic Monaghan, John Rhys-Davies really did hit every orc and Uruk-hai stunt performer with Gimli's axe.

Christopher Lee was surprised that Peter Jackson sometimes wanted more than 10 takes, because most films don't have time for that. But he said they got used to it. While shooting the scene in Saruman's garden, Lee told Ian McKellen they were on the 11th or 12th take and that he was worried. McKellen noted that the other day he had done 24 takes on a scene of just a few lines.

Christopher Lee predicted, "The Lord of the Rings will make cinema history. It will create an effect no one has seen before. I am completely convinced of it."

Lawrence Makoare on working with Christopher Lee: "I only had a few lines, but I was so overwhelmed by having Christopher in front of me that I couldn't even say them, because he used to scare me so much as a child."

After filming ended, Orlando Bloom kept Legolas's gloves.

The film was shot under the working title "Jamboree." This confused Sean Bean, and he called his agent to confirm he wasn't in the wrong film.

Kiran Shah was the scale double for Frodo and Bilbo but was not credited. He grew close to Ian McKellen. In the scene where Aragorn throws Frodo into the room at the Prancing Pony, Shah had to tell Viggo Mortensen to stop being too gentle. He returned as Bilbo's scale double in "The Hobbit" trilogy.

Viggo Mortensen became good friends with Sean Astin's scale double, Bhoja 'BK' Kannada. One day they went fishing and prepared dinner for the other actors.

Some have suggested that J.R.R. Tolkien based the nine kings of Men on the nine kings who ruled Europe during World War I: George V, Wilhelm II, Alfonso XIII, Frederik VIII, Haakon VII, Ferdinand I, Manuel II, George I and Albert I. The nine kings were photographed together only once, at the funeral of King Edward VII in 1910. However, Tolkien always rejected the idea that it was allegory.

"Harry Potter" and "The Lord of the Rings" revived interest in fantasy films, which had fallen out of favor since the 1980s. In the 2000s and 2010s, many fantasy novel adaptations were made, such as "The Chronicles of Narnia," Eragon, "The Golden Compass," "Inkheart" and "Percy Jackson."

The role of Saruman had previously been played by Fraser Kerr in the 1978 animated film and by Peter Howell in the BBC Radio production. Christopher Lee had appeared alongside Kerr in "Theatre of Death" (1966) and alongside Howell in "The Devil-Ship Pirates" (1964).

Sir Ian McKellen became the second English knight to play Gandalf; the first was Sir Michael Hordern, who took the role in the 1981 BBC radio adaptation.

The Weinstein brothers were reported to have earned about 70 million dollars from the trilogy.

The film grossed 12 million dollars domestically on Christmas Day, reaching the biggest Christmas Day box office up to that time. The previous record belonged to Cast Away (2000) with 11 million dollars.

The film was released in the US two weeks before J.R.R. Tolkien's 110th birthday.