Quotes

I was told I had to gain a lot of weight because Hobbits are very portly. Peter [Peter Jackson] is forever suggesting I have more food: "A little more food for Mr. Astin."

[refuting the remarks of cast and crew that he IS Samwise Gamgee] But I'm not really Sam . . . nobody could be that good, that noble. He's just better than the rest of us. I'm a lot more Hollywood than Sam would ever be.

I'd never heard of the "Lord of the Rings", actually. So I went to the bookstore and there it was, three shelves of books about Tolkien and Middle-earth, and I was like, "Holy cow, what else am I missing out on?"

[12/18/03, about the scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) in which Sam helps Frodo up Mount Doom] It was an incredible acting experience, being on the side of a volcano with that language. That language is so beautiful: "It'll be springtime soon, and they'll be sowing barley on the fields." When Peter [Peter Jackson] came up to tell me to lower my arm, something like that, tears were streaming down his face, and to see him that emotional just forced me into it . . . It [finally seeing the last three reels of the film] was a huge cry. It was all of the tension and stress and pressure of having a wife and children, having a career, the investment of these movies. I was sobbing and heaving, I could barely breathe, and the movie facilitated that. It was just a huge release.

[12/14/03, on his character Sam Gamgee] I spent the film doing lots of things, but the crying is what lived. He [Peter Jackson] tricks you into thinking you're going to get to do all these brave, heroic things most of the time, and you have to cry once in a while . . . and then he cuts out the heroic moments and you're left thinking, "I look like a big baby".

[2/12/04] I don't care if I'm 5'7" and pretty heavy, weight-wise, in the film [the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy]. I still see myself as Errol Flynn. Even when I was a little boy, playing war games in the back yard, I pictured myself as the hero.

[2/12/04] I remember, before we started principal photography on The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Peter Jackson screened Braveheart (1995) and The Thin Red Line (1998) for the cast. He said, "This is the tone I want to strike with the Ring movies. I want to see the grime on their faces, the dirt on the ground, and I want that level of gritty emotionalism and intensity." I think his idea was that you can enjoy the fantasy more if you really believe it.

[2/12/04, on souvenirs from Middle-earth] I got Sam's backpack, which began to feel like a second skin, albeit a very uncomfortable skin. I also got to keep Sam's sword, as well as some Hobbit feet and ears. I can take them out and make the whole family smile!

The sidekick business has been good to me.

[on Rudy (1993)] I loved this movie because it shows that if you work hard, you can achieve anything.

I have a very eclectic kind of upbringing in regards to religiosity or religion. You know, my mom was sort of a Catholic and then a lapsed Catholic and then an ex-communicated Catholic and then a brought-back-into-the-fold Catholic and then a kind of Shirley Maclaine New Age kind of something-or-other (laughter). And then my dad was very secular, raised by a school-teacher as a mom and a scientist as a father and then I was in Catholic school for three years as a kid; there was a confirmation process and I wanted to be confirmed, I had never been baptized. And so I asked if I could be baptized and he said no, not until I was 18. And then he discovered Buddhism a few years later and he wanted me to be a Buddhist, and so I kinda practiced Buddhism for a little while, and my older brother was sort of a swinging singles guy who discovered a guy named Swami Vivekananda and like shaved his head and went to India when I was like 10 or 11. And he was someone who I always admired, so I kind of got to see that strain. My biological father is Jewish and I never really knew him until I was 25 but then I did so he's kind of an interesting and wonderful man who I've gotten to know over the last few years, so there's kind of that strand.

People will root for anyone who shows them their heart.