- Hi I'm Elijah Wood and I'm doing
the Wired Autocomplete Interview.
[upbeat music]
[laughing]
Why is Elijah Wood hot?
What?
I didn't know that I was and I
don't know how to answer that question.
But thanks.
My parents?
Have
Daniel Radcliffe and Elijah Wood met?
Yes.
When we were doing ADR for one of
The Lord of the Rings films and they were shooting
Prisoner of Azkaban, the third Harry Potter film
and we got to go visit the set.
I met him then but I don't know that I've met him since.
But I certainly get asked if I am him a lot.
Which I find really amusing and it
doesn't bother me at all, seriously.
Does Elijah Wood play Spiderman?
[laughing]
In the movie?
No.
I mean I've played the video game.
It's good.
How did they make Elijah Wood small?
In Lord of the Rings I'm assuming.
It was a variety of different things.
So there'd be an entire sequence that would be shot
without us and then we would, with a motion control camera
more often than not, we would then go onto
a blue screen unit and sort of fit ourselves
into that same shot, we'd be comped in.
That was one way, we also had scale doubles,
people who were about the height of hobbits
that would wear our outfits and also
masks of our face which was pretty disturbing.
They were incredible and they did
a lot of our work for a lot of the wide stuff.
Occasionally there was forced perspective that was used
so a good example of that would be Frodo and Gandalf
on the cart in Bag End in the first film.
Frodo jumps into the cart and they're sitting side by side.
I was actually sitting slightly behind Ian McKellen,
Ian McKellen was sat slightly ahead of us
and the camera was placed in such a way that it looked like
we were sitting side by side with him taller than I.
You look at the monitor and we were siting
next to each other and he was giant
and I was small which was pretty magical.
It's a super old fashioned trick that totally works now.
And then there was like one sequence
that we ended up abandoning this technology
but they made these sort of big people
on stilts but in large human outfits
with articulated fake hands and arms
and we only used it once.
It proved to be effective in the background
if you see when they're trying to check into
the Prancing Pony under the name Underhill,
you see a few people walk by, these are these
people on stilts in giant outfits essentially
and they ended up abandoning that,
they didn't use it as much 'cos it wasn't super practical.
Anyway, it as a long answer.
Multiple tools in that particular toolbox.
Did
Ian McKellen and Elijah Wood film scenes together?
Yes we shot all of our scenes together.
So anytime that the hobbits were with anyone
that were larger than them, we would always be together
it's just occasionally we'd not be able
to look each other in the eye like you would normally look.
Sometimes we'd be on our knees to look small and we
could interact but we were always in scenes together.
It's just in terms of how we would be placed
in front of the camera to appear small or large.
What was Elijah Wood's first movie?
It was a tiny, tiny role in Back to the Future Two.
There is a scene in the Cafe 80s
and there are two kids at the back of the Cafe 80s
trying to play this gunslinger game with a light gun,
Michael J. Fox comes up and explains it to them
and then shoots a bunch of things
and does really well at the game and the kids
make fun of him 'cos they're like,
wait you have to use your hands?
Anyway that was the first thing I ever did.
What does Elijah Wood look like now?
What nationality is Elijah Wood?
Boring American.
I mean there's heritage that goes
way back but my nationality is U.S.
There's like a little bit of Danish in me,
little bit of English but that goes way back.
What does Elijah Wood eat?
[laughing]
That's a difficult question to answer
I could say a lot of different things.
Pizza's probably my favorite food.
My girlfriend and I, we eat a fair amount of pizza,
it's obsessive.
I also really love frozen pizza.
It's a little bit of a thing.
I go into new supermarkets, that you've never been to,
and seeing new brands of frozen pizza that you've never
seen before, you're like [bleep] I gotta give that a go.
There are certain frozen pizza brands
that I won't [bleep] with but
man I love a good frozen pizza.
What did Elijah Wood keep from Rings.
I have the One Ring,
I have a pair of latex hobbit feet, they're in good shape,
Sting, the sword,
I have a slate from the films as well.
Can Elijah Wood sing?
Err.
I'm not tone deaf
but I don't think I can sing very well.
I'm always pretty shy to sing karaoke
and need a little lubrication in order
to get the confidence to do it.
I dunno, I've been told I can sing,
I don't have a great deal of confidence in it.
I did actually audition for Moulin Rouge
so I took singing lessons for that
and the audition consisted of me singing two songs.
If there's a video tape of that,
that's gotta be pretty embarrassing.
Oh man.
Elijah Wood can and may.
That's cool.
That's actually a really old reference if that's what it is.
The first large role that I had in a film
was a movie called Avalon, I was eight years old.
There's a whole sequence where the character that I played
can't distinguish the difference between can and may
and he ends up going to the Principal's office
because of it or gets sent out of class
'cos he just can't understand the difference.
So I can and I may.
Maybe I can?
Can Elijah Wood play the piano?
I took lessons when I was young
like a lot of kids do.
Instead of reading the music, I'd play from memory
which is cool you know, a good thing sort of
but is a really bad habit 'cos I wouldn't
necessarily remember everything correctly.
I think I was like 13 or 14 and I quit
and then I ended up having to have a crash course
in playing piano for a movie called Grand Piano
because the character that I played
was an incredibly pianist.
I could play a little bit but not to anywhere that degree.
I didn't walk out of that knowing how to play
any better necessarily but I got really good
at fitting my hands in the right place at the right time.
It was fun, it was really scary.
Can Elijah Wood drive a stick shift?
I mean I've done it twice for work
but they were crash courses
like you've gotta do this now for this scene.
I mean the last time I did it, I almost went out of gear
and then very intensely put my foot on the accelerator
and I managed to successfully not hit anything and stop.
I need to take lessons 'cos there's some really great cars
that only drive stick and I can't drive them.
Does Elijah Wood
have a personal life?
Well of course I do.
I mean I'm a record collector,
I DJ from time to time,
watching movies, my girlfriend and I
we had all of these movies that we'd never seen
in this sort of collective shame list,
pretty significant films like I'd never seen a Kurosawa film
so we thought let's put together a film festival for us
to catch up on these movies and we'll invite friends.
We did that and it was really fun.
Does Elijah Wood age?
Yeah I do.
I get asked this question a lot.
I definitely age, I have gray hair
maybe not as many wrinkles as one would have at 39,
I don't know, it's all relative.
Does Elijah Wood
do magic tricks?
I used to, when I was kid I learned a couple of card tricks
that were relatively fun and
somewhat easy but I've since forgotten them.
So no I don't do any magic tricks.
Does Elijah Wood
have dichromatic eyes?
No, no they're both blue, both the same shade of blue.
I think.
Does Elijah Wood
wear wigs.
In life no, for work occasionally.
Okay is Elijah Wood
a twin?
No.
Not that I know of.
Maybe there's like an unknown twin
or a doppelganger out there.
Is Elijah Wood a DJ.
Yeah I started sort of casually doing it
way back in the Lord of the Rings days
and then officially sort of jumped into
records about I guess 10 years ago maybe a little bit less.
The thing about vinyl that's so exciting is that
it is a physical object so things can go wrong and you
have to be at the ready to fix that problem sonically
and so you're always on your toes,
there's nothing lazy about it, it's very active
and I just love that, it's really fun.
Is Elijah Wood vegan?
[bleep] no man.
I'm so sorry.
Don't mean to be offensive to any vegans.
I love food too much.
But yeah veganism is intense.
I mean you can't eat honey for instance.
Honey's delicious.
Is Elijah Wood left handed?
No I'm not left handed, I'm right handed.
Which is a good thing because I did fall on this particular
hand and it was out of commission for about three months.
So that would've been a bummer if I was left handed.
Is Elijah Wood
related to Evan Rachel Wood?
I don't think we are related but we
could be related as far back to England.
My heritage goes back to England and Ireland and there's
a good chance that hers could go back there as well
in which case, distantly, we could be.
You never know.
Elijah Wood is stealing your socks.
Is that really something that someone wrote on Google?
God how do they know?
I thought I was so discreet Jesus.
Is this the last board?
Not the last board.
Where is Elijah Wood today?
Like right now?
I'm doing this so I'm here today
but when you watch this, I won't be here,
I'll be somewhere else.
I can't answer that question
for you contextually, based on where
you are watching this now, I could be anywhere.
I don't know.
Oh man.
Where did Elijah Wood grow up?
I grew up in California.
I was born in Iowa and moved
to Los Angeles when I was seven.
I've lived here ever since.
Where did Elijah Wood go to college?
I didn't go to college.
My university time was taken up in Middle Earth.
[laughing]
it was four years of my life
was taken up making those films.
I also don't know that I would've gone to university
'cos I didn't graduate high school.
Didn't even get the GED, which I often did think
to do like maybe I should just do this
so I can graduate and I didn't do it.
That is not a good idea though, like graduate high school.
Don't follow in my footsteps, graduate please.
Where does Elijah Wood live?
I live in southern California
and occasionally I live in Austin Texas.
Okay.
Who does Elijah Wood look like?
Apparently a lot like Daniel Radcliffe
and occasionally like Tobey Maguire.
Who are Elijah Wood's parents?
My mom's name is Deborah
and my dad's name is Warren.
That's them.
Who is Elijah Wood
in Sin City?
I play Kevin in Sin City
who is a mute, very religiously fanatical,
in the kind of questionable way, cannibal.
Who is Elijah Wood married to?
I'm not married yet.
One day.
Who did Elijah Wood
voice in God of War?
I'd completely forgotten I did a voice for that.
Apparently Kratos' brother Deimos
and I remember I was killed and I get my head ripped off.
I had to scream
that was, yeah, I vaguely remember that,
that was so long ago.
That's it.