Lord of the Rings legend Elijah Wood is arguably one of the most famous faces in all of fantasy filmmaking because of Peter Jackson’s beloved adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel series. But according to the actor, his iconic performance didn’t exactly yield the big bucks.
“Because we weren’t making one movie and then renegotiating a contract for the next, it wasn’t the sort of lucrative scenario that you could sort of rest easy for the rest of your life,” Wood recently told Business Insider at the 2025 Texas Film Awards.
The actor also noted that the company who made the picture, New Line Cinema, took “a real gamble” by shooting all three films back to back — but that risk was only made possible by offering the cast “not massive salaries.”
That said, Wood made it clear that the salary, however small, was not the big draw of participating in the film. “The benefit of that was that we were also signing up for something that was going to be a part of our lives forever,” he explained.
In August 2024, Cate Blanchett — who starred in the LOTR series as Galadriel, elven lady of the woods of Lothlorien — discussed her own Lord of the Rings salary during an appearance on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live.
“No one got paid anything to do that movie,” she quipped at the time. “I basically got free sandwiches and I got to keep my [elf] ears.”
Wood reflected on Blanchett’s joke as well, deeming it “hilarious” and in good fun. “Statements like that are not made with any kind of ire,” he added. “It’s such an honor to have been a part of those films and they represent some of the best experiences of my life.”
Wood is perhaps best known for playing main character Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but most recently, he can be seen making an utterly hilarious cameo in Oz Perkins’ adaptation of Stephen King’s short story The Monkey.
Photo by DOUG KANTER/AFP via Getty Images.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
