Random Cast Of Lord Of Rings: Where Are They Now? (15 items)

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  (#1) Ian McKellen

  Sir Ian McKellan had decades of acting under his belt before playing Gandalf. He got his start in theater but it wasn't long before he started landing movie roles and the rest is history. He's continued his stage career since LOTR, and has also continued his sci-fi career, playing Magneto in a couple X-Men movies before and after the Tolkien trilogy, and even reprising his role as Gandalf for The Hobbit trilogy. He brought a gravitas to the sci-fi genre that had been missing, especially in comic book adaptations. Though he doesn't need to continue working, he does, recently voicing Cogsworth in the live-action Beauty and the Beast.

  In 2009, McKellan played Estragon in a London stage production of Waiting For Godot alongside Patrick Stewart. Speaking of Captain Picard, the two are the most adorable best of friends, tickling fans by constantly sharing their buddy exploits on social media. 
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  (#2) Cate Blanchett

  • Actor

  Going into The Lord of the Rings, Blanchett was one of the biggest stars, having already won a Golden Globe as Queen Elizabeth in the eponymous film, for which she also received an Oscar nomination. She continued to amass awards and nominations after the trilogy, winning two Academy Awards, one for Supporting Actress in The Aviator, and one as a Leading Actress in Blue Jasmine. She's had no issues finding work: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Monuments Men, reprising her role in The Hobbit trilogy, Family Guy, How to Train Your Dragon 2, and of course, Thor: Ragnarok, to name a few. 

  Unlike most actors, Blanchett is in a long-term, successful marriage, having been married to playwright Andrew Upton since 1997. She's also an activist for a number of causes, and was named global Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 2016. 
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  (#3) Viggo Mortensen

  • Actor

  Although Viggo Mortensen had appeared in a couple big movies before Lord of the Rings (Psycho and G.I. Jane), his role as Aragorn was definitely his big break. Immediately after LOTR, Mortensen started getting lead roles in action movies thrown at him, with the family friendly Hidalgo first, followed by a couple decidedly not family friendly flicks, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. Since then he's started to slowly transition to more traditional drama with the film adaptation of The Road being somewhere in the middle of the two genres, and more recently Captain Fantastic, a 2016 family drama for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor as Ben, a struggling father of six.

  In his personal life, Mortensen is known for his linguistic capabilities, speaking Danish, English, French, and Spanish fluently, as well as being conversational in Italian, and can understand Norwegian and Swedish. He's also a huge hockey fan, specifically of the Montreal Canadiens, proving his love by wearing a Canadiens tee under his armor throughout the filming of LOTR. "It gave me just a little more power with the sword," he said, according to The Globe and Mail.
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  (#4) Elijah Wood

  • Actor

  Elijah Wood had over a decade of acting work under his belt by the time he first appeared onscreen as Frodo Baggins, despite being just 20 when The Fellowship of the Ring hit theaters. After the trilogy, he immediately hopped into indie films, most notably playing Patrick in the critically acclaimed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He's had consistent work ever since he got into acting, with a lot of his roles since LOTR being voice work, and many of those in video games. That said, he's continued to appear in movies, but more recently become known for his quirky TV shows, like Wilfred and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Basically, he's done it all.

  Wood seems lelatively down to Earth as far as actors go, and downright miraculously stable by child actor standards. In 2012, Wood sold his nearly $2 million Santa Monica dwelling and bought a sub-$700k quaint home in Austin, Texas. See? Just a regular guy.
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  (#5) Orlando Bloom

  Orlando Bloom had less than a handful of tiny roles before landing the part of Legolas in Lord of the Rings. Suddenly he was an international heartthrob. Since then, Orlando Bloom's career has been on a rocket ship. The year the trilogy ended, he slid into a leading role of another gigantic franchise, playing Will Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean, appearing in four films so far. He got a couple leading roles during the mid-2000s obsession with classical action movies: Paris in Troy and Balian de Ibelin in Kingdom of Heaven. He of course reprised his role as Legolas in the last two Hobbit movies.

  His love life has been a bit tumultuous for the last decade and a half, his first noteworthy relationship being with Kate Bosworth. Then came a brief marriage to supermodel Miranda Kerr with whom he had a son. In 2016, he had a relationship with Katy Perry that lasted about a year; they reconnected and got engaged in 2019.
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  (#6) Andy Serkis

  With his role as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, Andy Serkis became the "Godfather of Motion Capture," in CNET's words. Since then he's donned the quintessential ball-covered tech suit to embody King Kong, Supreme Leader Snoke, and Caesar, the protagonist of the wildly successful Planet of the Apes franchise reboot. But he's also gotten to show his real, human face on screen, starting that transition, oddly enough, by playing Richard Kneeland in 13 Going on 30. A whole slew of traditional acting roles have fallen in his lap since, with Ian Dury in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and, most notably, breaking into the empire that is the Marvel Comics Universe as Ulysses Klaue aka Klaw in Avengers: Age of Ultron and now Black Panther.

  Serkis is another one of those weird celebrities with a successful marriage. He's been married since 2002, and lives with his wife and three children in North London. Using his motion capture expertise, Serkis founded The Imaginarium Studios in 2011, now adding producer and director to his resume, with a huge gig behind the camera as director of Disney's 2018 film Mowgli.
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  (#7) Sean Astin

  Much like his fellow hobbit Frodo, Sean Astin has been all over the map since The Lord of the Rings. He's been in live-action TV shows and movies, voiced characters in animated TV shows and movies, and also offered his voice to many video games. Shortly after LOTR, he had a large supporting role in 50 First Dates, then a recurring role on 24 not long after that. He's been in a slew of video games, voicing Raphael in a few of them while also voicing the Ninja Turtle in the animated series since 2012. All this of course has come after LOTR, before which he was already a star from The Goonies and Rudy.

  And now he's a meme. Astin played the universally loved Bob Newby in Netflix's Stranger Things. After a tragically heroic death, fans were heartbroken thus immediately came to be the #BobNewbySuperhero meme, eulogizing the sweet, genuine character all over social media, placing him upon a pedestal of heroism.  
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  (#8) Sean Bean

  • Actor

  As anyone familiar with Sean Bean knows, you can never become attached to any character he plays because he is inevitably going to die. He actually started the trend before The Lord of the Rings, dying in The Field, Patriot Games, and GoldenEye. The trend continued through LOTR and beyond, one of the more heartbreaking fatalities coming in Game of Thrones when Ned Stark got his head chopped off. But his penchant for dying hasn't kept him from finding work; if anything, it's increased his desirability as a guy who can pull off an especially convincing death.

  In Summer 2017 he married for the fifth time to Ashley Moore.
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  (#9) Liv Tyler

  • Actor

  Liv Tyler has had a steady career since before LOTR. She had already made a name for herself before the Tolkien adaptation, starring in the blockbuster Armageddon. After the trilogy, she added another big name movie to her resume with The Incredible Hulk. Most of her career, however, has been in smaller indie flicks, one of the more recognizable being Empire Records back in '95. She hasn't been inundated with work, appearing ubiquitously across all forms of media like some of her fellow cast members, but she's undoubtedly been comfortable. 

  Like her fellow famous female elf, Tyler has a long history of activism. In fact, she too was named a Goodwill Ambassador for her role with UNICEF in 2003.
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  (#10) Hugo Weaving

  Hugo Weaving took a break from villainous roles with his tenure as Elrond in The Lord of the Rings, but has returned to evil form in pretty much everything he's been in since. His run as Agent Smith took place during the LOTR years. He then went on to play Red Skull in the first Captain America during which time he was also voicing Megatron in the Transformers movies. In fact, even if you haven't seen Weaving in every sci-fi action movie since LOTR, you've probably heard his voice. He played V in V for Vendetta, which was largely voice work, as he wore a mask the whole time, and he took his vocal talents to the world of animated films as well as video games.

  Weaving is also a solid person off camera, raising a family with his girlfriend of over 30 years with whom he lives in Sydney and has two children. He's an animal rights activist for the organization Voiceless, becoming their Ambassador to Australia in 2004.
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  (#11) Christopher Lee

  Lee's filmography, both before and after The Lord of the Rings, is as extensive as any actor's in history. His voice was deep as the ocean, lending incomparable weight to the many villains he played, allowing him to have a prolific singing career as well. After LOTR, his largest role was as Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (other than his reprisal of Saruman in The Hobbit). He put that basso profundo to other good uses, voicing characters in a variety of video games and numerous Tim Burton movies, both animated and live-action.

  Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee died at the age of 93 in 2015. He had a long, remarkable life, a descendant of the Holy Roman Empire's coat of arms bearers, a right given to his ancestors by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. On top of his film and musical career, Lee was an author and stage performer. In short, he did it all, and did so with style and class.
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  (#12) Ian Holm

  While Ian Holm's acting career was more bustling before his Bilbo Baggins days, he certainly wasn't been hurting afterwards. Immediately after LOTR he was in Zach Braff's popular indie flick Garden State. After that, he reunited with LOTR alum Cate Blanchett in The Aviator. Other than a brief reprisal of Bilbo in The Hobbit, Holm's biggest film credit was probably in Ratatouille as the voice of Skinner. There were a few other small movies and shows, as well as a couple video games, but his golden years were largely been dedicated to his personal life.

  His biography discusses his four marriages and his battle with anxiety and cancer. While he's been nominated for a couple Emmys and an Oscar, his most noteworthy award was a Tony he won back in 1967. 

  Holms eventually passed away in June of 2020 due to complications from Parkinson's disease

   
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  (#13) Dominic Monaghan

  Shortly after his stint as Meriadoc Brandybuck, Dominic Monaghan earned the honor of being killed by Sabretooth in the terrible X-Men Origins: Wolverine. He then went on to have a long run as Charlie Pace on J. J. Abrams's hit show Lost. Other than that, since LOTR Monaghan's been in video games, a bunch of random TV shows, a couple small movies, and an Eminem music video. 

  His work doesn't end there, however; he's done work for PETA, owns a small forest in India, and has a variety of strange but awesomely named pets, including a black widow spider named Witchitar, a leaf-mantis named Gizmo, and an albino snake named Blink. He also has a spider named after him after helping discover the species. On top of all that, he dated fellow Middle Earther Evangeline Lilly for five years.
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  (#14) Billy Boyd

  Billy Boyd's acting career peaked in 2003, the year he finished filming his role as Peregrin Took in Return of the King, in addition to a role in the big-budget film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Since then, his biggest gig has probably been the voice of Glen, the son of the titular possessed doll in Seed of Chucky, and that was only a year later. That said, Boyd has had consistent work for the last 15 years, bouncing around between TV, small films, and video games, even if you haven't heard of a lot of his projects, like Space Milkshake or Stoner Express.

  Nowadays, Boyd participates in a lot of sports you might find on ESPN 8: The Ocho. He's an avid surfer, fencer, and martial artist, a Grade 7 in fencing and Phase 4 rank in Filipino Kali and Jeet Kune Do. He was married in 2010, with Merry (Dominic Monaghan) in attendance of course, as well as Frodo (Elijah Wood). It was the least they could do after traveling all the way to Mordor.
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  (#15) John Rhys-Davies

  • Actor

  John Rhys-Davies's career is as varied as any actor's, ranging from Shakespeare to SpongeBob SquarePants. Some might realize that Rhys-Davies actually played two characters in The Lord of the Rings trilogy: Gimli and Treebeard (voice). His filmography is absolutely packed, with virtually no breaks since the '60s, boasting a lot of voice work since LOTR (Gargoyles, SpongeBob SquarePants, Justice League, The Jungle Book, etc.), as well as a bevy of live-action roles (Once Upon a Time, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, Arli$$, and a whole lot more).

  Rhys-Davies found himself in some hot political water back in 2007 after expressing apparently anti-Muslim views. He backtracked his comments after they were endorsed by the fascist British National Party, denouncing the white supremacists. He suggested he'd been converted from the far left to right wing after attending a Margaret Thatcher speech in the '60s as a college student.

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