I first read Tolkien when I was cast as Bilbo, I've never read it before
You have changed, Bilbo Baggins.
You are not the same Hobbit as the one who left the Shire.
I like his innocence, I guess, and I like playing the change from
innocence to experience I suppose, I like that.
I said he has a figurative journey as well as the
literal one he goes on and that you get to play different aspects.
Every actor wants to play different - just things -
you know beats within a moment, beats within a scene, you don't just
want to be playing the same thing all the time
and you certainly get that aspect to Bilbo,
definitely by the second film.
There's a person with more iron in his backbone
I guess and he's just seen more so his
whole worldview has shifted.
I
found something in the Goblin tunnels.
Found what?
What did you find?
My courage.
I think like with any real-life heroics
you know, no hero considers himself a hero, you speak to people in
the fire service or the military where ever,
they don't think what they're doing is heroic at all.
And Bilbo doesn't see it. Its kind of heroism that
creeps up on him. Out of necessity and
because he's gotta save his friends lives or he is gotta save his own life and so it's just
fight or flight. If he had to sit down and think about
"Would I really face a dragon?" no way he'd do it. "Would I kill 20-foot spiders?", no way.
He wouldn't want to go through the barrel
escape either, no one would.
You might drown at any second so it's just all out of
spur-of-the-moment decisions for him and that's the best way that you
I think as an audience member you see change gradually and you see it
in the moment as opposed to something the filmmakers have cheated
and they come back and now he's a hero everyone we just telling you he's a hero
well why? Let's see why he is a hero.
It was great to film, I didn't film it with Ben.
It took a long time to film, over many months actually
I last was doing bits on in the summer
in July and I first worked on how many decades ago and is great,
great scene, I love it and Ben brings a fantastic aspect to that voice.
He did the whole physical performance in a
performance capture suit, but given that he's not two hundred feet tall
and is not the shape of a dragon is only so much you can kind of do with that but
yeah he brings a fantastic vocal quality to it, which he has a great
range, especially that lower registry he has is really good.
Very right for Smaug.