Quotes From the Man

"I simply want to carry on doing what I am doing for as long as I can, and I don't want to take advantage of a specific moment and burn out really quickly. Believe me, the world does not revolve around the movies.  Mine certainly doesn't."

"I realized I had to embod a character that so many people are familiar with.  It's a massive amount of pressure."

"I want to be a better actor.  I want to do things I've never done before, explore parts of myself I've never explored before."

"Elijah Wood 'the movie--I hate this word--star' is a completely different person.  At home I put it all away."

"I kind of kept away from a lot of the sort of bull---- of the [entertainment] industry."

"I'm so grateful for not having been a part of anything that was immediately really famous. I'm really fortunate to have had a sort of gradual rise. It's allowed me to maintain a position as opposed to kind of going all over the place."

"Things that I do in my free time, I go to movies a lot and I'm a huge music fan so I go to see as many bands as I can see, which is great."

"I find that the media attention on people's relationships is kind of annoying and disgusting. I don't want that to be a focus."

"I don't know how I picked this spot [pulls up his shirt to show the tattoo on his stomach]. It just felt like the right place. All I can tell you is when I was getting it, it hurt like a motherfucker!"

"I knew going into it that it would be as much a life experience as it would be a filmmaking experience. I knew I would be taking a journey that would mirror that of the book. And I knew I would go as a fresh 18-year-old and leave a different person--hopefully a wiser, older, more mature, stronger individual. I lived life as an adult really for the first time. I've had some independence, and I have always felt older than I was. But going to New Zealand and truly getting a taste of what that meant really gave me a new perspective on life."

"I saw the movie for a second time just the other night, and it really hit me how it resonates. It's about facing adversity, relying on your friends and facing things with courage and hope. I think of that as a beautiful thing. If people can see this now, and take those things away from it in light of recent events, it's a bonus."

"I think we lived very Hobbit lifestyles. We were always going to the pub and having a bit of a drink and a meal. Hobbits love to eat, so Hobbits love to drink. We, in some ways, embodied the things that are Hobbity initially, and I think we just became more Hobbity as the project wore on. The Hobbits tended to spend their free time together, so the the closest friends that I had on the movie were Billy and Dom and Sean."