On the role of an actor in film: "It comes down to the fact that you supply the blue, and they supply the other colors and mix them with your blue, and maybe there's some blue left in the painting and maybe there isn't. Maybe there wasn't supposed to be any there in the first place. So have some fun and make a good blue and walk away."

"I don't plan [my career]; I wait and hope the right thing will find me."

"Photography, painting or poetry those are just extensions of me, how I perceive things, they are my way of communicating"

"I'm the one who said yes to these movies, and now I'm having to pay the price for it. I mean if I had my druthers, I wouldn't do any movies anymore, frankly."

"I was on my way out of a Sunday rehearsal(The Lord of the Rings trilogy). When I was walking out of the gym, all sort of sweaty, half in street clothes and half in Aragorn's clothes, waving the sword around, trying to keep a mental picture of what we've just done. Just walking down the street, down to where my car was parked, on a Sunday afternoon, waiving the sword around, looking like some desperate Rasputin character. Cops car comes: there's been some report..."

"I'm not 23 years old and I don't have plans to make another 20 big Hollywood movies or something."

"Well, I certainly wouldn't be here and my face wouldn't be up there on a poster if it wasn't for the success of Lord of the Rings. It's just a fact: film-making, finance, life."

"Seeing who you are playing with is a relief. In The Lord of the Rings we did a lot of things when there was nothing there."

"But I can also publish books by interesting painters and writers and I can afford to do so because my own books sell and there's a public that's interested in that. And the public have gone to see exhibitions I've had - more than they would have."

"There is no star in LOTR. The Fellowship is a union."