LOS ANGELES
Nowadays, Elijah Wood is the bearer of not one ring but two: a wedding band on his left hand and a silver signet ring that spells out “dad” on his right.
As Wood’s 6-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter creep toward tweenhood, the Lord of the Rings star and his wife, film producer Mette-Marie Kongsved, are pondering when to share those Oscar-gobbling, Hollywood-reshaping epics with their children. But first, experiencing the J.R.R. Tolkien texts is a must. Will the little ones read the books as a family or wait until they’re old enough to make the journey to Middle-earth on their own? That’s undecided. The same goes for the point at which they can deal with the orcs and trolls and Nazgul of it all.
“Honestly, I feel like my son could handle it now,” Wood says over breakfast at the Venice bakery Gjusta. “Maybe less so my daughter. But she’s a firecracker, so who knows?”
Beyond the Rings films, Wood’s filmography is so eclectic that there’s a movie for every age and occasion. Tykes can relish the dolphin-befriending adventure of “Flipper” or the tap-dancing penguin antics of “Happy Feet.” Looking for something more mature? Sit with the crime drama “Green Street Hooligans” or the head-tripping romance “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” And if you’re in the market for blood and gore and hands-over-your-eyes frights, boy does Wood have you covered. He played a schizophrenic killer in 2012’s “Maniac.” A musician stuck in a noirish nightmare in 2019’s “Come to Daddy.” A hunchbacked ghoul of a man in 2023’s “The Toxic Avenger.” A devilish attorney in “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come,” which hits theaters Friday.
Wood, of course, will forever be tethered to Frodo Baggins, the stout hobbit who anchored three of modern cinema’s most enduring blockbusters. Yet the 45-year-old’s career beyond that defining role remains decidedly undefinable.
“He just listens to his own instincts,” says actress Melanie Lynskey, who worked with Wood on the darkly comic thriller “I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore” and the survivalist series “Yellowjackets.” “He really follows what’s of interest to him, and he makes really bold, interesting, crazy choices.”
Take “Ready or Not 2,” the sequel to 2019’s stealth horror-comedy hit. Having adored the first film, Wood accepted the offer to join that world of socioeconomic satire and absurdist violence. (“Anytime there’s blood cannons,” he says, “it is really awesome.”) Joining the cast as the Lawyer, an arbiter overseeing a sadistic game of hide-and-seek played by the global elite, Wood lends his star power and scene-stealing presence to yet another off-the-rails romp.
“It’s sort of like how [Harry Potter actor] Daniel Radcliffe does that, too,” says “Ready or Not 2” star Samara Weaving. “They’re both these huge blockbuster stars who have played quite wholesome characters — and they’re going: ‘You know what? I’m going to play the biggest freaks you’ve ever seen.’”
Wood may give a lot of thought to what his children are old enough to absorb, but his older brother was, um, more cavalier. Wood figures he was 6 years old when Zack, seven years his senior, first exposed him to splatter flicks — on the condition, naturally, that he not tell their parents. Among his formative favorites: “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors” and the little-seen slasher “Truth or Dare?”
“I was exposed to these films and loved them, and wasn’t traumatized by them,” Wood recalls. “Certainly, as a kid, you’re just attracted to the illicit things you’re not supposed to see. The horror section at the video store is a pretty exciting place to be.”
Wood, who was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, before moving with his family to Southern California for his acting career, grew up in front of the camera in such movies as “The Good Son” (1993), “North” (1994) and “Deep Impact” (1998). He was 18 when he traveled to New Zealand to step into Frodo’s furry feet and 23 when that chapter of his life concluded with “The Return of the King’s” unprecedented (and unrepeated) sweep of the 2004 Academy Awards.
Soon after, Wood ventured to Austin — the underground movie mecca where he would later buy a home — to reunite with “The Faculty” director Robert Rodriguez on 2005’s pulpy anthology film “Sin City.” His role: a mute serial killer with a taste for human flesh. As Wood put Frodo’s selfless nobility behind him, he gravitated toward the freedom of genre storytelling and the “hard response” that came with unexpected opportunities and irresistible collaborators.
“Post-Lord of the Rings, when there is so much cultural attention, there was a world in which, yeah, maybe I could have been a little bit more strategic and been thinking about building a career upward,” says Wood, who co-founded the genre-driven production company SpectreVision in 2010. “But I didn’t really think that way. I was really drawn to things that I had a response to and led with my gut.”
His gut has since taken him to the small screen for starring roles in the series “Wilfred” and “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency,” plus his recurring gig as Walter — an off-kilter citizen detective with a sociopathic streak — on Showtime’s “Yellowjackets.” On the big screen, he has collected a suite of hidden gems. Take “Bookworm,” 2024’s quirky father-daughter road trip adventure that sits at 91 percent on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Or 2017’s “I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore,” the 89-percent-approved caper in which Wood plays a neighborhood oddball who likes to pump iron and hurl ninja stars.
“He’s sort of sneakily versatile,” Lynskey says. “Because he has such a memorable face, you would think he could easily be typecast — and he’s just really not. He plays against type, and you never feel like it’s odd.”
“Ready or Not 2,” which recently premiered to critical acclaim at South by Southwest in Austin, continues the pattern. In the first movie, Weaving’s Grace marries into a blue-blooded family that, as part of a deal with the devil, becomes hell-bent on having her head. Now, having survived her blood-soaked wedding night, Grace must outlast the world’s wealthiest families in a second round of hide-and-seek to the death.
Administrating that game is Wood’s enigmatic Lawyer, a steward of satanic texts who nonchalantly articulates and enforces the byzantine rules. Speaking with co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, Wood concluded that his character had been doing the devil’s bidding for centuries, and he delivered his dialogue with corresponding bemusement. “There’s a sort of detachment,” Wood explains. “He’s probably seen wealthy, power-hungry people fall over themselves for power time and time and time again.”
Then there’s the movie’s MacGuffin: a ring of power with a knack for corrupting minds. Come again?
Remarkably, Frodo himself didn’t think much of that plot point until he got on the “Ready or Not 2” set and unspooled some dialogue about this golden ring’s profound influence. It was then that he was struck by “wait a second …” déjà vu.
“At that moment, it was certainly not lost on me,” Wood says with a laugh. “I see the parallels, for sure.”
Wood isn’t above good-natured self-reference, though it can take some convincing. When Rachel Sennott, the creator and star of the HBO comedy series “I Love LA,” approached Wood about guest-starring as himself, he told her that he had long resisted such overtures — but that her pitch had won him over all the same.
“It was that thing where I couldn’t deny it,” Wood says. “It was too funny.”
Wood pops up in the fourth episode of last year’s first season. When Sennott’s character and her social-climbing cohorts attend a party at Wood’s home, two of them stumble upon the actor quietly obsessing over “The Simpsons” in his bedroom. Although the show establishes Wood’s reputation as a well-adjusted child star — “It’s actually shocking,” one character utters, “that Elijah Wood managed to end up psychologically unscathed” — the fictionalized version swiftly spirals. Soon enough, Wood reveals himself as a socialization-starved germophobe who soars off the handle while belting Smash Mouth and summoning his memory palace.
“He’s willing to be silly and not take himself too seriously,” Sennott says. “His reputation as a lovely human being who is incredible to work with precedes him. I think it says a lot about him that people watch him in the show, and no one is like, ‘That’s kind of what he’s like.’ Everyone’s like, ‘Oh my God, that’s obviously an insane version of him.’”
Wood credits his mother with instilling him with humility from a young age. “She was far more concerned,” he says, “with raising a good human being than how well my career was going.” Although Wood achieved global fame and cinematic immortality in his early 20s, he notes that it came after he had plugged away in Hollywood for more than a decade — sparing him the whiplash of overnight success.
“I live life with no expectations,” he says. “I’m a genuinely enthusiastic person.”
Wood lives up to his reputation during our early March meetup in Venice. “Amazing,” “rad” and “awesome” are staples of his vocabulary. He gets particularly gleeful when recounting a pair of cross-country road trips his family embarked on in recent years. Something of a foodie, Wood raves about the sourdough at Gjusta and, upon learning I’m bound for Palm Springs, drops a recommendation for a modest smashburger eatery called the Heyday. “They have a burger-and-a-martini special,” he marvels. “I mean, you can’t go wrong with that.”
His collaborators verify this innate amiability. “He loves to hear everybody’s stories,” Lynskey says. “I played Mafia with him for my birthday, and he’s such a fun player.” Working on “Ready or Not 2,” the initially in-awe Weaving promptly forgot about Wood’s outsize reputation. “I just got to know him,” she says, “as Elijah, the sweet, funny, kind dude.”
Exhibit A: Last fall, Wood and his family were revisiting the (now permanently built) Hobbiton set from the Lord of the Rings in New Zealand when they stumbled upon a Shire-themed wedding. In a wholesome clip that went viral, Wood sheepishly strolls up, wishes the bride and groom congratulations, and poses for a photo with the happy couple.
“It was just one of those perfect moments of happenstance,” Wood says. “I thought, ‘I can’t not say hello.’”
Wood can’t confirm whether he’ll return to New Zealand this year when “The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum” starts shooting … but he also won’t deny Ian McKellen’s public assertion that Gandalf and Frodo will be back for the latest Middle-earth quest. Dutifully addressing the prospect as a hypothetical, he reckons it would feel like a family reunion or “time travel” — just like his cameo in 2012’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.”
Reprising Frodo would also underscore the character as the cornerstone of Wood’s on-screen legacy — not that this was ever in doubt. Asked about emerging from the trilogy in his mid-20s understanding that he would forever be best known for playing Frodo, Wood smiles and corrects the record: He knew as much years earlier, in 1999, shortly after production on the films began.
“You realize that those characters will be with us forever, and you can either see that as a really great gift and an asset — or be burdened by it,” he says. “I feel so grateful for the variety that I get to embark on in my career and the circuitous paths that I get to take. In some ways, it wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for Lord of the Rings.”
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