Articles and interviews : 2013

On what playing Thorin has meant to him; "I think it’s really made me reengage with what I want from my career. It’s not fame and fortune certainly. It’s the ability to investigate a character in this way, but at the same time it’s going to be really difficult to surpass this experience. I’ve got to maybe give up the idea of finding another character like this. But I had said that before. I played another character where I said, I’ll never find another character like that and then this one came along. It was John Thornton in “North and South,” which is something I did maybe eight years ago. But it was a book I loved and a great writer and a great director, just a small BBC four-part series but it had a real impact on me and again changed me as an actor. So I found this one eight years later. I hope it doesn’t take eight years. I know I will find it somehow. We’ll see."

On Thorin as a leader: "He is finding the ability to suggest to himself that he might be wrong. That very simple idea that no matter how tenacious your ideas are and how tenacious your character is, if you can look at yourself and say I might be wrong about this person or this event or this pledge, then I open my mind and potentially become a better person and definitely a better king."

On getting back into character for the pick-ups filmed in 2013: "It was harder than I thought it was going to be. You always underestimate … putting on the wig and the costume, you think, ‘Oh I’m just going to be able to snap back into it.’ But actually, it took about 48 hours; that sounds like nothing, but the very first day of filming I had a really long scene, which took two days to shoot, with Ian. And I couldn’t find his voice again! I was going into my trailer and doing voice work to try and pitch the voice right. Luckily I wasn’t moving around, I was sitting down, so … I mean, all the ideas stay with you, and obviously I’d made quite a lot of notes, so I’d sort of swotted up beforehand, to try and remember where we were. The good thing about it was, a year on, having seen the movie and understanding the character a little bit more, I feel like there was a bit of germination that had happened. So there was another layer that I could add to the character. That went through all of the pick ups; whenever we were going back into scenes, there was a little bit more understanding of where the character had been, and where he was going to, which I felt was really useful, to giving it another dimension."

"Being in those bloody barrels, it was like being at the fun fair for three days. In an unsinkable barrel getting dumped on with tons of water, it was just relentless, and kind of frustrating, but fun at the same time. And I was like, 'We will never have another day like that on a film set.' It was like being a child on a constant rollercoaster that you just didn't get off all day. So that was pretty amazing."

Asked how fans have reacted to his interpretation of Thorin, he said, "They have been very polite to me. I don’t really know, I don't troll the Internet for comment, but people have been very kind to me face to face. I try to respect that everyone will have their version of that character, I had my version when I was 12 and I have my version now that I'm… older than 12. So I try to respect everybody's opinion and then bring my own thoughts to the table. It is a new idea, it is a new manifestation of the character. It's not the wizened old man that I'd perhaps seen when I was a child, but it was important that he was a legendary warrior because we do need to seem him potentially rise to reclaim his title as King under the Mountain, and I think you needed someone with enough prowess to do that. So, people have been kind."

On the dwarves: "The thing that most interested me was this idea of these people being in exile. That really struck a chord with me because there are so many examples of it from the past half-century – the dwarves are essentially refugees just trying to find their way home, and I think that’s something of eternal human interest. And this gold lust that will eventually consume Thorin, I think that is something particularly in the past five years that has really become very relevant as well, just because of the way the global economy has changed. I was fascinated by how greed can change a person mentally and emotionally, which is what happens with Thorin as our story progresses."

On the prosthetics for Thorin: "Well it's my beard, which I'm growing back in time for the next lot of filming, the hair is a wig which strangely a lot of people don't realise, but the forehead the eyebrows and the nose are all prosthetics."

"Each piece had a price tag on it that would make you baulk. They cost about $2000 each, you only stick them on once because they’re so delicate, and once the day is over you throw them in the bin. I had a collection of Thorin's eyebrows stuck to the wall, each eyebrow hair had to be punched in by hand, and if you think that every single time it has to be identical, it's just a work of art. Our prosthetic artist would spend each night punching eyebrow hairs into the mould, being so meticulous about it. It's a whole new world of skill."

On filming the stunts: "I had a stunt double, I had a scale double, I had a riding double… My stunt double is a much better fighter than I am, but by the end of the shooting he'd kind of coached me so we could both do the same kinds of things."

"Some of the big stunts, like where Bilbo falls off the mountain and Thorin has to jump down and nearly falls over, I did that one myself because my double was doing it and asked if I wanted to have a go and I was like, 'Yeah yeah, let me try!' And it's interesting because of the whole hero thing of actors doing their own stunts - I like to do it because it makes me get into the character even more and it means you've been through everything the character's been through and you feel closer to him. It's not about saying 'Oh I do my own stunts', it's about saying 'I am this character and I fight like this character and I feel like this character'."

Asked about the biggest challenges of playing Thorin, he said, "The physical challenges, that was the endurance test really. When it comes to the physical thing, you just go to the gym and work hard and bear the heat and discomfort. It's not exactly rocket science, it's just about endurance.

One of the challenges I always found was that I came up with a voice for him and keeping my voice at that level was complicated, because your voice changes from morning to evening — if you've done a lot of shouting the day before with fighting — trying to keep a constant sound to him was challenging. But of course we can go back and do a lot of sound post-production."

On being directed by Peter Jackson: "It was always very difficult to get Peter to sit down before you went onto set to talk about the character, or the process or the story. He actually likes to have a conversation while the camera is rolling, so the whole thing feels like an experiment. He loves it when you develop an idea and he’ll go with you. It takes a while for you to find that path together. But one of the things he does which I absolutely love is that he’ll use another actor to get the performance out of somebody, so he doesn’t necessarily come to you and say I want this response. He’ll take an actor away that you’re going to work with. And I had a moment in movie 3 – which I can’t talk about – with Martin where I was in the middle of a scene and he took Martin away, and I didn’t know that he’d done this. And Martin came back and played something to me which got quite an extraordinary response from me that I had not predicted – and that was the take. And that’s actually what he [PJ] does. And he did it to me as well. I had a scene with Kili and he [PJ] took me aside and said ‘I want you to say this, I want you to do this’ and we got the response from Aidan. And I say this; it’s such a great piece of work you just don’t know that he’s having an effect on you."

On Thorin, "Thorin’s elemental really. I remember doing my research into the dwarves: in The Silmarillion they talk about how the dwarves come into being; they’re born of the rock, and they’re laid in rock in the end. And I remember thinking, “That’s the key to this character; he’s of the earth.” They live underground; he sort of is a kind of a cave man, but he’s also a member of the royal family. His prowess on the battlefield is extraordinary. So all of these elements, I guess I saw someone who didn’t really have any vanity."

"He had to have a charisma, which has to do with his nobility, and the way that he commands his troops. I think that he commands through example rather through just instruction, which is something that was important to me. "

On Peter Jackson: "The thing about Peter Jackson is that he just doesn't understand the word 'no'. Even when you're on your knees vomiting into a bucket about to pass out, he'll be like, "Do you have another take in you?" And it's not in an egotistical or demanding way, it's just he throws down the gauntlet and people pick it up."

On Thorin in the second film: "The trust between Thorin and Bilbo has now been established. He's gone from somebody that absolutely dismisses this halfling to realising he's an essential part of the quest. Bilbo becomes his confidant and that goes further into film three - we're planting seeds for when Thorin is betrayed by Bilbo..."

Asked about how The Hobbit compares with his other work, he said "There's no comparison. I knew before I started there would never be another film like this for me. Not just the experience of making the film but the incredible complexity of the character, the transformation of my physicality... It ticks every box I could ever want as an actor. And then working with Peter Jackson, who takes you to a new place in terms of work. It's probably the most important piece of work I'll ever do."

On working with Thorin's make-up, wigs and costume: "It is something you get used to. Going back this year for ten weeks, I was thinking about it last night, and one of the awful things is having to get all that stuff on again. For the first few weeks it's very uncomfortable and it feels alien to you. But after a while, it's part of staying in character and it focuses you. If you're thinking about this stuff on you it pulls you out of character. So the closer you stay to character, the less you care about the stuff you're wearing."

On sword-fighting: "I worked with Mana Davis, my stunt double, on a training regime to facilitate some of the moves the Orcrist would make, because it's a big heavy sword and it flows in a certain way. I'm still doing those exercises in the gym now in preparation for this year. It's very much about the back and the shoulders and making it look like it's heavy, but elegant."

Responding to Lorraine's suggestion that if it was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Thorin would be Grumpy, he said, "He is a bit of a grump, isn't he? We tried to soften him up a bit and give him a sense of humour, but it's not really there in the book. He is pretty cantankerous in that book."

On the dwarf boot camp, held before shooting began in New Zealand: "It was originally a three week training period. It turned into eight weeks because Peter Jackson fell ill, but it was really beneficial for us because we got more time to learn how to walk, to interact with each other, to fight. We literally had these enormous boots we had to walk in. They were like clown boots, because dwarve's feet are much bigger... and heads and hands, as well. We did a lot of improvisation. We'd go out into the field and behave like a military group where we found our hierarchy, which was really useful.

On Black Sky: "We shot that last year and I've done some extra footage in the beginning of this year. It's a tornado movie called Black Sky. It's an action-based piece but we did a lot of wire work on location and dropping cars from buildings. It was pretty dangerous stuff."

On Ian McKellen: "He's very naughty. He's got a great sense of humour and he keeps the set very bouyant. It was a real honour and privilege to work with him. He commands such respect and he's part of the family from Lord of The Rings, but his humour is to be... experienced."

On the daily transformation into Thorin: "People complain about spending three hours in the makeup chair, [but] those three hours were very much a preparation time for me. I didn't go to sleep - I really enjoyed watching him 'arrive' every morning. [The makeup and prosthetics] was enough of me and enough of the character so that you could sort of see both."

On Thorin's costume: "[Although] it was an endurance test, and was extremely hot, I couldn't play the character without it. I remember... being asked to go to the set to rehearse before I had completed the transformation - I always found that very difficult. I really needed all of the elements of the costume... in order to become the character."

On the most challenging aspect of filming The Hobbit: "You will find that most of the dwarves talk about Scene 88. There's this one scene in the movie where the dwarves are being chased... and we shot this chase sequence in every location we could find in New Zealand over the course of ten weeks. It was a running scene, so we spent ten weeks running, and running. We had to run with all that gear - all the bags, all the weapons, all the backpacks. So it was the full weight of the dwarves running all through the north and south ends of New Zealand; it was relentless."

"If this opportunity had come to me 10 years ago, I would not have survived. I wouldn't have known what to do with it. Now I feel like I've got an opinion to bring to it, my own interpretation of the character in the book, but other things as well, attitudes that I think we can make resonate with a contemporary audience: honor, loyalty, nobility, corruption."