John Rhys Davies Herr Der Ringe

Peter Jackson and the artistic team behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy assembled a Fellowship on screen and on set up. The feel of well-nigh two years of filming was so securely felt by the ensemble that, after completing filming, the actors of the Fellowship got matching tattoos to cement the bonds they'd forged together in New Zealand. Merely ane member of the core cast doesn't bear the elvish "9" on their person: John Rhys-Davies.

2021 marks The Lord of the Rings movies' 20th anniversary, and we couldn't imagine exploring the trilogy in merely one story. And so each Wed throughout the twelvemonth, we'll go there and back again, examining how and why the films have endured equally modern classics. This is Polygon's Twelvemonth of the Ring.

Since bringing Gimli the dwarf to life, Rhys-Davies has joked that he doesn't have the tattoo because "whenever there's anything dangerous or that involves blood, I sent my stunt double to exercise it." Just the true story is much more complicated and impressive. Another actor spent a great deal of time playing Gimli alongside the other actors of the Fellowship, albeit without much credit. Stunt double and size double Brett Beattie has never spoken to the media nigh his fourth dimension playing Gimli in the Lord of the Rings films until now, but in his own humble mode, he's ready to share the total extent of how much he put into the office, recall some quondam battle wounds, and reveal why he was chosen to become a fellow member of the tattoo fellowship.

Beattie was most as green every bit they come when he stepped into the blockbuster globe of Middle-globe. Although he had done "a wee fleck" of high school drama while growing up in Canterbury, on New Zealand's Southward Island, he had no serious interim experience to speak of. What he did have going for him, however, was a black belt in martial arts, plenty of horse-riding experience, and a height of 4-foot-10 — helpful for a motion picture where many main characters are dwarves or hobbits.

"I'chiliad a land boy. I come from a rural environment," Beattie tells Polygon. "From having no experience. I couldn't take gotten kicked more than in the deep stop, permit'southward put information technology that way."

Initially, Beattie was hired to practise horse stunts. ("I did that for 2 weeks and out of everything I've washed, my god, that was dangerous.") However, casting soon picked him up because he was an able calibration double and could stand up in for Rhys-Davies — who, despite playing a dwarf, was the tallest member of the principal cast at 6-human foot-1. But one time it became clear that the facial prosthetics needed to bring Gimli to life triggered a nasty allergy in Rhys-Davies' skin, Beattie became the get-to Gimli.

"I am enlightened that a lot of the people, even hardcore Lord of the Rings fans, presume that a lot of the shots are some tricky sort of photographic camera bending or some CGI shrinking John Rhys-Davies down," Beattie says with a proficient-natured laugh. "I don't desire to outburst anyone'due south bubbles, but I can only think of a couple of shots where CGI was used to shrink Rhys-Davies down."

Viewers tin can't really tell when Gimli is Rhys-Davies and when he'due south Beattie — that'southward the whole betoken — just Beattie tin. He recalls watching a YouTube video of a minute and a half of Gimli fight scenes, and realizing that all but four seconds of the montage were him. Beattie says he spent 189 days — some 2,300 hours — every bit Gimli, all told.

Beattie, photographed rehearsing Gimli's infamous "tossing" on gear up at Helm's Deep.

Photo courtesy of Brett Beattie

His time on set was not without incident. Only final month, Beattie got his third knee reconstruction surgery, a consequence of having diddled both knees while filming the movies. "The surgeon was request me how I got those injuries, and I was like, 'Well, I was contesting Uruk-hai at Helm's Deep,'" Beattie says, every bit he lists off other close calls similar a sinking canoe, dodging equus caballus hooves, and taking an ax to the head. While belongings one of the heavier, more detailed prop axes for a close-up shot of Gimli running, Beattie attempted to toss the weapon from 1 hand to the other.

"I clipped my brow on the way past. Considering I was wearing a prosthetic mask, the blood couldn't go out. And then the claret built up and built up under the mask until, somewhen, an eye bag which was glued on actually ruptured, and the blood merely started spurting out," he recalls. "It looked a lot worse than information technology actually was."

Even when they weren't becoming claret balloons, those facial prosthetics were a lot to endure. The scale doubles playing the hobbits had full safe masks they could merely pull on and off, and there was an unwritten rule that they couldn't be in the masks for more an hour at a fourth dimension on fix. Beattie, meanwhile, had more than 2 kilograms of silicone and foam condom glued to his face for a minimum of 12 hours a day, sometimes more.

"A lot of guys couldn't do it," Beattie says, not trying to brag and then much equally just earnestly convey what a hardship those prosthetics were. "I'd actually seen a guy ask to put it on, and he was getting claustrophobic and had to have information technology off."

Toward the cease of filming, Beattie was running on fumes — figuratively and literally, when y'all consider that he was essentially sweating out the chemical adhesives used to attach the Gimli prosthetics. He and his prosthetic artist Tami Lane were frequently the get-go people on set in the early hours of the morn to get him set to shoot, and and so he'd accept trouble sleeping due to an onset of insomnia. He took to taking naps, in costume, while filming.

"I'd get woken upwardly — 'Brett, you're on!' — and the side by side thing I knew, I'd be running through Fangorn Woods or the Mines of Moria getting chased by goblins," he recalls. "I wasn't awake, I wasn't asleep; I just concluded up in this really crazy state of consciousness."

Beattie was doing far, far more than he ever imagined he would be when he first got involved with the Lord of the Rings films, and he was certainly going above and beyond what one might look from a typical stunt performer. The residue of the cast knew it, besides. This is where the tattoo comes in, besides as some of the more unsavory aspects of moviemaking.

With the encouragement of his seasoned motion picture star bandage members, Beattie, who did non have an agent or any pic business concern experience, asked to go a screen credit befitting the amount of time and effort he'd put into Gimli. The producers agreed, proverb that he was going to be listed in the credits as Gimli'due south stunt, scale, and photograph double. Merely a calendar week later, he says, he was told that he actually couldn't be given the screen credit, due to "movie politics'' and "concerns near preserving the illusion that is Gimli." Beattie is listed in the credits, simply just every bit a stunt performer. (Sean Astin's book near his time filming Lord of the Rings, In that location and Back Again: An Actor's Tale, confirms that Beattie well-nigh got co-credit for playing Gimli.)

Beattie is hesitant to tell this story. As crushing as the bait and switch was, he says he holds no grudges, understands the impulse to protect Gimli as a character, and doesn't want to rock the boat or cause a controversy in the Lord of the Rings world. Still, the lack of a proper screen credit was a disappointment after everything he'd put into the movies. The cast picked up on this. While Rhys-Davies is oftentimes quoted as proverb he sent Beattie to get a tattoo in his stead, Beattie says — and There and Dorsum Once more: An Actor's Tale corroborates — that information technology was actually the rest of the cast who reached out to him.

"I recall Elijah Wood actually approached me first and invited me. And to tell yous the truth, my biggest business organization at the time was John Rhys-Davies. I knew that this wasn't supposed to be for me to exist asked to get this tattoo. Then I said I had to think most information technology," Beattie explains, adding that he relented when Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloom asked him once more the following day.

Then, on a Sunday afternoon, Beattie, Mortensen, Bloom, Wood, Astin, Ian McKellen, Baton Boyd, and Dominic Monaghan (Sean Bean was already in England, according to Beattie'south recollection) headed to a tattoo parlor in Wellington to get elvish numerals engraved on their bodies. It was an honor for Beattie — "no dubiousness about it," he says.

Beattie, with Orlando Bloom, getting his Fellowship tattoo.

Photograph courtesy of Brett Beattie

Beattie's only regret is what happened later. "Subsequently nosotros got the tattoos, Elijah says to me, 'Myself and a few of the cast members are going into Peter Jackson's armory today, um, to play with machine guns. Come.'" Still utterly exhausted from the rigors of the shoot, he declined.

"I almost feel like I owe the cast some sort of an apology for not digging deeper and making that effort," Beattie admits. "I spent a lot of time on set with the bandage every bit a professional working. I spent a lot of time with mainly Viggo and Orlando socializing and fishing, but I didn't have much to do with the [hobbit actors] or Peter Jackson. It was all very professional person, and that was an opportunity to get to come across them and to get them to meet me without a mask glued to my face up."

Despite missing out on some bonding over machine guns, Beattie is all the same forever a member of this special fellowship. He'due south not in touch with the other actors anymore, though Bloom made a special effort to track him down and catch upwards when they both worked on Peter Jackson's Hobbit films. Nowadays, Beattie, who worked with EA Games on the Lord of the Rings video games after filming and still takes the occasional stunt office at present and then, spends most of his time operating a native tree farm in Canterbury. He doesn't show off his tattoo much or get any recognition, really, for what he put into the Lord of the Rings films.

Despite being thought of — if he's thought of at all — every bit but "Gimli'southward stunt double," Beattie is proud of what he accomplished during the making of the films. "I knew I'd done something harder than I'd ever done in my life, and I knew I'd never work that difficult again," he says, adding that he also feels he did something practiced for his country, considering the tangible ways in which the trilogy benefitted New Zealand's filmmaking and tourism industries.

Playing Gimli was a life-changing experience, for more reasons than but getting some permanent ink to quietly honour his unsung contributions. Beattie ends our interview by telling the story of his final day of filming. He'd been up until early in the morning time for the home nativity of his first kid, and then hopped on a airplane to pic the Two Towers scene where Gimli gets pinned by a dead warg and snaps an orc's neck. Within 24 hours, he was back home holding his baby in his arms.

"There aren't too many people who accept been jumped past a warg, killed an orc, and delivered a babe all in the same day," Beattie says with a grin.

Source: https://www.polygon.com/lord-of-the-rings/22535564/lotr-gimli-actor-double-brett-beattie-cast-fellowship-tattoo

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