Fascinating facts you might not know about ‘The Lord of the Rings’ (20 Photos)

Elijah Wood dressed up in breeches and a flowing shirt and went out into the hills to shoot his audition tape. His friend George Huang, directed the video.

The large tree that stands above Bag End was built especially by the production department. Every leaf had to be manually attached.

The Tolkien estate was never in favor of Peter Jackson’s film adaptation but seeing as J.R.R. Tolkien signed the rights away in 1968 for $15,000, there was nothing they could do about it. Tolkien’s grandson Simon came out in support of the production and was disowned by his relatives. Tolkien’s son Christopher Tolkien later retracted any opposition.

Andy Serkis, who played Smeagol in LOTR, also played the role of Caesar in the Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

During filming, most of the members of the Fellowship took up surfing in New Zealand in their spare time. Among them was Viggo Mortensen, who wiped out terribly one day, and bruised one whole side of his face. The next day, makeup tried to mask the bruising and swelling, but were unsuccessful. Instead, Peter Jackson opted to film Mortenson from one side for the entire scene in the Mines of Moria.

Daniel Day-Lewis turned down the role of Aragorn.

Hobbiton was made a year before production began to make it look like it was a natural, lived-in place, complete with real vegetable patches. The greens department regulated the length of the grass by having sheep eat it.

The shots that were too visually complex to be conveyed on a storyboard were rendered digitally on a computer in a stage known as pre-visualisation. Peter Jackson received a lot of pointers on this from George Lucas and his Star Wars producer Rick McCallum at Skywalker Ranch.

The original cut ran four hours and thirty minutes.

It is estimated that filming of the trilogy pumped about $200,000,000 into the New Zealand economy. The New Zealand government even created a Minister for Lord of the Rings, whose remit was to exploit all the economic opportunities the films represented.

The massive trees in Lothlorien forest are made entirely of rubber.

Large amounts of hair had to be imported into New Zealand for all the wigs. They found some women in Russia who were cutting their hair and selling it to filmmakers.

During filming, Liv Tyler left her pair of prosthetic ears on the dashboard of her car. When she returned they had melted.

The design for the Hobbits’s feet took over a year to perfect. Over 1800 feet were produced for the 4 lead Hobbits alone, and each pair would take about an hour and a half to be put on over the actors’ real feet.

John Rhys-Davies, who plays Gimli the dwarf, is the tallest of the actors who play members of the Fellowship. He is 6′ 1″.

The main sound elements for the cave troll were a walrus, a tiger and a horse.

After filming the 3rd installment of LOTR, the New Zealand government planned to make Hobbiton into a tourist attraction, it never happened. Instead, the Shire is now inhabited by sheep, bringing the original sheep-eat-everything theme full circle.

Fans were offered the chance to have their names in the special edition’s hugely lengthy closing credits for $39.95.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King were filmed simultaneously. The back-to-back shoot lasted a record-equaling 274 days, in 16 months – exactly the same time as taken for the principal photography of Apocalypse Now.