Elijah Wood The Lord Of The Rings
Jemima Torguson
Wood founded the record label Simian Records in 2005, which was dissolved in 2015. He directed the 2007 music video "Energy" for The Apples in Stereo. In 2010, Wood co-founded a film production company for horror films, The Woodshed, renamed SpectreVision in 2013. Wood is a disc jockey, and has toured globally with his friend Zach Cowie as the duo Wooden Wisdom.
Wood was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on January 28, 1981,[1] to Debbie (ne Krause) and Warren Wood, who operated a delicatessen together.[2] He is of English, Danish,[3] Irish, and German ancestry, and was raised Catholic.[4][5][6] He has an older brother named Zachariah[7] and a younger sister named Hannah. At age seven, Wood began modeling and taking piano lessons in his hometown.[8][9] In elementary school, he appeared in The Sound of Music and played the title character in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He served as a choirboy in a production of See How They Run. Wood's parents sold their delicatessen in 1989 and the family, without his father, moved to Los Angeles to allow him to pursue an acting career; they divorced when he was 15.[10]
Wood modeled and appeared in local commercials; his first appearance was in the music video for Paula Abdul's "Forever Your Girl," directed by David Fincher. This was followed by a pivotal role in the made-for-TV film, Child in the Night, and a minor role in Back to the Future Part II, as a boy from a futuristic 2015 who teases Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) for playing an arcade game because "you have to use your hands".[11] Nine-year-old Wood auditioned for a role in Kindergarten Cop, but was told by director Ivan Reitman that his performance was not believable, which Wood later said was "a harsh thing to say to a nine-year-old."[12]
Playing Aidan Quinn's son in Avalon garnered professional attention for Wood; the film received widespread critical acclaim and was nominated for four Academy Awards.[13] A small part in Richard Gere's Internal Affairs was followed by the role of a boy who brings estranged couple Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson back together in Paradise (1991). In 1992, Wood co-starred with Mel Gibson and Jamie Lee Curtis in Forever Young,[14] and with Joseph Mazzello in Radio Flyer.[15]
Wood played Frodo Baggins in the 2001 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the first installment of Peter Jackson's adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's multi-volume novel. Wood was a fan of the book series, and he sent in an audition tape of himself dressed as Frodo, reading lines from the novel.[25] He was selected from 150 actors who auditioned.[26] Wood was the first actor to be cast.[27] This gave Wood top billing, alongside a cast full of stars.[28][29][30] The Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed in New Zealand; principal photography took over a year, and pick-up shooting continued annually for the next four years.[31][32]The films used forced perspective to have Frodo and other hobbits (with an average height of 3 ft 6 in (107 cm)) appear much shorter than they really were.[33] Before the cast left the country, Jackson gave Wood two gifts: one of the One Ring props used on the set and Sting, Frodo's sword. He was also given a pair of prosthetic "hobbit feet" of the type worn during filming.[24]
Wood's first role following his Lord of the Rings success was in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), in which he played Patrick, an unscrupulous lab technician who pursues Kate Winslet. The film received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2005. He next played the silent serial killer Kevin in Robert Rodriguez's adaptation of Frank Miller's comic book series, Sin City (2005). Wood's audition for the role only consisted of staring at a film camera while passages from the graphic novel were read.[35] On May 12, 2005, Wood hosted MTV Presents: The Next Generation Xbox Revealed for the launch of the Xbox 360 video game console.[36]
In Everything Is Illuminated (2005), Wood starred as a young Jewish-American man on a quest to find the woman who saved his grandfather during World War II. It was based on the novel of the same name by Jonathan Safran Foer. In Green Street (also 2005), he played an American college student who joins a violent British football firm. Both had limited release but were critically acclaimed.[37][38]
Wood shot a small part in Paris, je t'aime (2006), which consists of 18 five-minute sections, each directed by a different director. Wood's section, called "Quartier de la Madeleine", was directed by Vincenzo Natali. The film played at the Cannes Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival.[39]
In George Miller's animated musical Happy Feet (2006), Wood provided the voice of Mumble, a penguin who can tap dance, but not sing.[40] Happy Feet grossed over $380 million worldwide, and received both the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film. Wood reprised his role for the film's sequel, Happy Feet Two (2011).[41]
Also in 2006, he was part of the ensemble cast of Emilio Estevez's drama Bobby, a fictionalized account of the hours leading up to the June 5, 1968, shooting of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy. In the film, Wood marries Lindsay Lohan's character in order to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam War.[42] Bobby screened in competition at the Venice Film Festival. Wood, along with his co-stars, received a nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.[43]
Later that year, Wood hosted the television special Saving a Species: The Great Penguin Rescue for Discovery Kids;[44] he received a nomination for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in Children's Programming.[45] That same year, it was announced that Wood was set to star in The Passenger, a biographical film about singer Iggy Pop.[46] However, the project failed to come to fruition after years in development.[47]
On January 4, 2007, Wood joined Screen Actors Guild president Alan Rosenberg in a live telecast to announce the nominees for the 13th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards.[50] Later that year, he starred in Day Zero, a drama about conscription in the United States, which had its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival.[51]
In The Oxford Murders (2008), a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Guillermo Martnez, Wood played a graduate student who investigates a series of bizarre, mathematically based murders in Oxford.[52] The following year, he voiced the lead in the animated feature film 9, which was produced by Tim Burton.[53]
In January 2011, it was confirmed that Wood had signed on to reprise the role of Frodo Baggins in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first film of the Hobbit trilogy, directed again by Peter Jackson.[57] The film was released the following year and grossed over $1 billion at the worldwide box office.[58]
Wood featured in the Beastie Boys' 2011 music video for "Make Some Noise," along with Seth Rogen and Danny McBride.[59] He then starred in the Flying Lotus music video "Tiny Tortures," where he played a recent amputee coming to grips with his new situation. The psychedelic video was described as "menacing and magical."[60]
In 2012, Wood had a supporting role in the romantic comedy Celeste and Jesse Forever, and starred in the horror film Maniac, for which he received the Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Actor.[61] Maniac was mostly shot from a first person point of view of Wood's character.[62]
Wood played the leading role in the 2013 Hitchcockian suspense thriller Grand Piano.[63] He voiced Shay, one of two main characters in the adventure game Broken Age, for which he received the 2014 Performance in a Comedy, Lead award from National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers (NAVGTR).[64] Next, Wood provided the voice of main character Wirt in Cartoon Network's animated miniseries Over the Garden Wall.[65] The series collected three Primetime Emmy Awards in 2015, including Outstanding Animated Program.[66] This was followed by prominent roles in films The Last Witch Hunter (2015), opposite Vin Diesel; The Trust (2016), opposite Nicolas Cage; and I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017), opposite Melanie Lynskey. The latter film was awarded the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in January 2017.[67]
From 2016 to 2017, Wood co-starred with Samuel Barnett as Todd Brotzman in the BBC America series Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. It was announced in December 2017 that the show had not been renewed for a third season.[68] Wood provided the voice of Nick Johnsmith / Gristol Malik in Psychonauts 2.[69]
In 2019, Wood starred as the musician Norval Greenwood in Ant Timpson's black comedy thriller Come to Daddy.[70] He both starred as Special Agent Bill Hagmaier and helped to produce Amber Sealey's 2021 crime mystery No Man of God, based on the real life story of Hagmaier's relationship with serial killer Ted Bundy.[71] In 2023, Wood played the starring role of Fritz Garbinger in Macon Blair's superhero comedy horror movie The Toxic Avenger, one of a series.[72]
Wood appeared in The Cranberries' music video for "Ridiculous Thoughts" and in Danko Jones' three-piece series: "Full of Regret," "Had Enough," and "I Think Bad Thoughts."[73][74] He also appeared in the Beastie Boys music video "Make Some Noise."[75]
On April 11, 2008, Wood was the guest host of Channel 4's Friday Night Project. On April 25, 2009, he was honored with the Midnight Award by the San Francisco International Film Festival as an American actor who "has made outstanding contributions to independent and Hollywood cinema, and who brings striking intelligence, exemplary talent and extraordinary depth of character to his roles."[76]
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