Elijah Wood

Born on January 28, 1981 in Cedars Rapid, Iowa, Elijah Jordan Wood was the middle of 3 children. The name Elijah, which is pronounced “ilaiya”, comes from the Hebrew and means “the Lord is my God”. He had a normal childhood, but he was mischievous. His mother remembers that when she was 2 years old, she accidentally closed the door of her house, leaving her outside, unable to enter, while she watched him destroy the kitchen. In elementary school he was the lead in various musical works. During 1988, while Mrs. Wood was watching television commercials, it occurred to her that her son would do better, and she enrolled him in a modeling school. At a convention of young talents, the little boy caught the attention of a representative, Gary Scalzo, who bet on him as an actor, getting a contract for a video by singer Paula Abdul. Small roles followed inBack to the Future II and Dirty Business . It was director Barry Levinson who gave him a major role in Avalon, and he shared the lead with Don Johnson and his then-wife Melanie Griffith , in A Place Called Paradise . He was also a child star in Richard Donner ‘s The Force of Illusion,and accompanied Mel Gibson in Forever Young . His biggest children’s hit was The Good Son, where he stole the spotlight from ’90s wunderkind Macaulay Culkin . In Flipper , where he befriended a dolphin, he caught the eye of the Australian Paul Hogan, who said he could give lessons to many adults he knew. “As a child actor I have come far, I am proud,” said the actor at the time. Although his role was small, Elijah stood out as the son of Sigourney Weaver in The Ice Storm . “With that film I started the path to being an adult actor,” recalls Elijah. Already a teenager, he was the boyfriend of Leelee Sobieski in the catastrophic Deep Impact , and a student who discovered that her professors were possessed by aliens at The Faculty .

Elijah Wood learned that director Peter Jackson , whom he admired for Heavenly Creatures , was going to adapt The Lord of the Rings , one of his favorite books. Sensing that it was a unique occasion, he asked his friend the director George Huang ( How to make a monster) to film him playing the protagonist of Tolkien’s trilogy. When he received the video evidence, Jackson realized that he was the ideal actor to play Frodo Baggins. They began 4 years of filming in New Zealand, an experience from which Elijah claims to have emerged “trying to be a better person, because the plot made me reflect on who I am, and what meaning I want to give to my life.” Although he says that he spent all this time “in hibernation”, literally living “in Middle-earth”, the experience was worth it: they were the best years of his life, and he became a star. “Luckily, I’ve been doing this for a while, and one learns to deal with fame, and with the fans of this film, which are too many, and some of them are rather annoying,” explains the actor.

But the one ring is “a heavy load”, and his Frodo has left such a good memory that it will be difficult for him to get rid of it in the future. Between installments in the trilogy, she starred with Edward Burns in Ash Wednesday , which went under the radar, as did All I Want , with Germany’s Franka Potente . He has inaugurated a stage of his post-ring career with a secondary role in Forget me! , with Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet . And it doesn’t stop rolling. After the sports drama The Yank , he will act in  Sin City , an adaptation of Frank Miller ‘s black genre comic , which he is preparing with Robert Rodríguez