5 Fun Facts About Lord of the Rings

1. The actors did a lot of their own... stunts.

I'm sure you all remember that classic scene where Aragorn throws an apple at Pippin's head for complaining about not getting enough food. Viggo Mortensen threw it himself, sixteen times in fact because that's how many times it took to get the scene right. Billy Boyd thinks that Mortensen loved each take, but in his defense who wouldn't.

And then we have to talk about the fact that in the scene in Shelob's lair, if you don't remember her she's the big creepy spider that almost killed Frodo, Elijah Wood actually wasn't blinking. Apparently one of his many talents is the ability to stare without blinking for long periods of time.

2. Gandalf hit his head on that ceiling beam for real.

Since this isn't really a stunt I couldn't put it in the section above, but Ian McKellen's famous encounter with that ceiling beam at Bilbo's wasn't planned. He hit his head accidentally, but acted through the pain. Peter Jackson applauded him for his performance and kept the scene in the movie.

3. Viggo Mortensen is really cool.

I know we all know that, but he may be even cooler than you realize. Not only did he do all his own stunts, but he insisted on acting with a real steel sword. Nobody should of been too worried though, he is quite the swordsman. Bob Anderson, who choreographed the fight scenes for Lord of the Rings, said Mortensen was the best one he ever trained. As a little background Anderson was an Olympic fencer that trained other professionals. Fun Fact: Anderson also choreographed Star War's fight scenes. Mortensen is also trilingual, he is fluent in English, Spanish, and Danish. He even asked specifically to have more scenes in which Aragorn spoke in Elvish.

4. John Rhys-Davies isn't who you think.

Everyone thinks of him as Gimli, myself included (see what I did there 😏), but he also voiced Treebeard. He read his lines in the lowest voice he could, while speaking into a wooden megaphone. And if you aren't already shocked enough, he is actually the tallest member of the main LOTR cast.

5. There are a lot of differences between the books and the movies.

First of all there was no Tom Bombadil in the movies. The reason for this according to Peter Jackson is that poor Bombadil didn't do enough to help the story line along and would have made the film too long. Bombadil is one of many characters missing from the movies, and even characters that made the cut still had their battle scars. For instance, in the books Gollum was portrayed to be as dark as the cave he lived in. In the movies he somehow came out paler than Frodo's face when he saw him for the first time.