Interview: Billy Boyd from ‘The Lord of The Rings’

Written by contributor Marcin Zwierzchowski

Almost 20 years after The Lord of The Rings Billy Boyd, who played Pippin, reflects on his career and the impact of Peter Jackson’s trilogy.

How do you choose your roles?

As an actor, if you’re lucky enough to get any roles then that’s a good thing. If you can choose a little bit, then even better. I try and read things that are coming up and see what looks interesting. Things morph over the years as you get more and more interested in different things. There’s all different reasons but mainly it’s normally down to your ratings.

And didn’t they try to typecast you after The Lord Of The Rings?

Yeah. And still do, I think. I think every actor, or almost every actor, gets typecast a little bit.

Especially after such a big thing, right?

And because our characters were so recognizably different, because we were small, to this day casting directors think I’m four foot tall. It’s crazy.

John Rhys Davies John got it worse, because he played a dwarf.

He’s like 6’2 or something.

I looked at for example what Elijah Wood did after The Lord Of The Rings. His next roles were hooligans and a psycho killer in Sin City. He said with this: ‘I’m not a hobbit’. He played a stone-cold serial killer. Did you think about this, when those typecasts happened? Did you want to do something totally different and show them?

Well it’s different. Elijah’s got a real love for horror movies and he has his own production company that makes horror movies. I’ve never been a huge fan of that genre, so I like much more positive stories and so I never really looked for that. Although, I did play a few characters who were hard men or killers, because I think some directors and some writers like the idea of getting a hobbit on a killing spree.

And I’ve got no problem with that, but I never think of a specific character. It’s much more about story, because I came from theatre and knew about writing for theatre, it’s normally about the writing rather than me trying to find a course for my career. I’m much more about finding a good story that’s well written and just being part of that.

As you said, you started with theatre. And after The Lord of the Rings you came back to theatre.

I still love to go back and do some theatre and I know always will. In fact the last time I was in Warsaw was about 15 years ago. I was studying at the academy doing theatre, learning Russian writers like Chekhov. That was the last time I was in Poland. But it’s weird because the thing about big movies is you sort of lose a little bit of self-reliance. Everything’s done for you. Everyone takes you places. You get on a plane, you don’t know where you’re going. And then to go back to something where it’s like: ‘Get yourself here, we want you here at 10 o’clock. Can you bring your own costume?’. That kind of thing you know is actually funny?

There’s this romantic vision of actors and their job, but the reality is that you just have to sit an wait a lot between takes.

Because of the amount of time, ours is a hard job. And yeah, there’s a lot of waiting around. There’s a lot of killing time, finding ways to keep yourself amused. I like to sleep, so that’s good. But Dom Monaghan would never let me sleep, because he was always wanting to do something: play a video game or something. It’s nowhere near as glamorous as you would think.

When I’ve read about you, the thing that struck me was that you saw Star Wars and then you decided to be an actor. Was that true?

It’s sort of true. I was on a holiday vacation with my family and The Empire Strikes Back had just come out, and I watched that every day, when it was on. I just thought: ‘I want to do that’. And when I went to drama school to learn to be an actor, it was to be a movie actor. I had no interest in theatre and it’s only when I was at drama school that I got an interest in theatre. So in some ways it is true. I wanted to be in Star Wars.

And you kind of got your Star Wars, because The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and now Game of Thrones are those one-in-a-generation or even one-in-history productions that define everything. And do you see any cons in terms of that you played this role and it was at the beginning of your career?

It’s always hard because you make decisions and then that’s the path that you’re on. And there’ll be parallel universes where you didn’t have that, but you never know what it was going to be. I was quite happy in theatre and small independent films and then The Lord of Rings happened, and it takes you down a certain path. I’ll always be thankful for it, because to act, to be an actor and be part of anything that’s remembered is just great. But to be part of something that changed movie history… The Lord Of The Rings is really special. So in some ways, whatever happens, I’m happy that that.

It will be twenty years next year.

I can’t believe that. And I don’t think, in fact I know there was never a time when I resented it. There was a time when it was weird, when it was huge. And it was difficult to walk around and go on vacation or do something. And that was that was weird. I didn’t resent that. It was just like something to have at that one point in your life, to feel in a small way what it would be like to be in The Beatles or something. It was weird. And it was a few years of that. And it’s nice to be able to go on the underground again and be able to travel around.

And did you have the sense that there was a challenge to do something at least as big?

No, I never felt that I’ve got to do something bigger. As long as it is good work, as long as it feels like I’m proud of that then I don’t mind. I don’t mind if it’s a movie that eight people see, as long as the eight people thing that’s good work.