Gandalf (Ian McKellan) lights his way through the Moria in The Fellowship of the Ring. (Photo by Pierre Vinet for New Line Cinema. All Lord of the Rings images courtesy of New Line Cinema.)

John Rhys-Davies: I read English and history with a little, tiny bit of philosophy, and I too had a philosophy professor, who I loathed. Actually, the more I got to know him, the more I understood his torment. He was a fascinating man.

There's a book by a man called Ved Mehta, an Indian intellectual who interviewed a number of English intellectuals in the early Sixties. It's called The Fly and the Fly-Bottle. In it, Mehta talks about the young philosophers at Oxford under the influence of this man called Gale Austin who wrote a book called How to Do Things with Words.

Crescent Blues: Uh oh. That's dangerous.

John Rhys-Davies: God, yes. Austin was an analytical philosopher. I remember the paragraph. It said, "While Austin was alive, many of the younger Oxford philosophers found it impossible to compose a paragraph, because after they had done so, they heard Gale Austin's dry voice taking it apart piece by piece."

[Davies' philosophy professor] was tall. He was, clearly, at one point, a very handsome man. He'd gone up to Oxford before the war. He got a First in Part Ones. He was the captain of a tank regiment in the Western Desert and fought with distinction with the Guards. After the war, he went back and took a starred First in the Tri-Parts and was elected to a fellowship at Baillol. Went to Harvard, got an M.S.C. in mathematical logic, came back again to Oxford and settled down, married a smart woman and then did nothing.

John Rhys-Davies at Dragoncon2001."

He was always writing this definitive work on mathematical logic. In the end, he became known as his wife's husband, rather than as a man in his own right. He was always drinking far too much. He was constantly saying, "Oh, God, I left my manuscript in Oxford. I've got to go back this weekend and pick it up there…. Oh, God, I couldn't find my manuscript in Oxford. I must have left it down in London. I'll have to go down to London this weekend and pick it up there."

He was constantly being arrested by the police for driving drunk. (They were a bit more tolerant in those days.) In the end, he died as an old alcoholic. But he and I engaged in a sort of headlong…over one of the girl students, actually. But I certainly got up his nose, and I perfectly understand why.

But he had a wonderful trick in lecturing that I've longed to put in a piece. He would light a cigarette, and he would walk to one side of the room where there was an ashtray. He would light his cigarette. He would drop his ash in the ashtray, and he would go to the blackboard and write "Descartes and such and such a thing." Then he would walk over to the far end of the room where there was another ashtray, and he would put the cigarette down. Then he would walk back to the blackboard, write again on the blackboard and walk over to the first ashtray and light another cigarette. Then he would commute between the two cigarettes. Such a wonderful piece of business! I've longed to put it into something.

He was a sad man, one of those men whose glory days really had been between 19 and 24. Hugely intelligent. I think the report to the Tri-Parts was that they had not awarded a higher mark since 1919. I guess, in truth, he was one of those individuals whose critical intelligence was so well-developed that there was nothing he could think of that he could not find a fault in. And he despaired of finding anything he could not find fault in. Although any form of creativity demands self-criticism, if your critical and creative abilities are exactly matched, you can't do a thing.

Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) wishes Frodo (Elijah Wood) well on his journey in The Fellowship of the Ring. (Photo by Pierre Vinet for New Line Cinema)

Crescent Blues: That's one of the reasons editors seldom write, although many of them are more proficient than the writers they edit. They look at their own efforts and say, "Well, it's not as good as the person I edited yesterday. The thought isn't there. The heart isn't there. Besides, I really don't have anything new to say on the subject. OK, I'll withdraw it."

John Rhys-Davies: Really? The heartbreaking thing is, particularly for the young… I don't know about you, but I was very self-competitive. I was a very unhappy teenager. I had to be the best at whatever I chose to do. But when you come up against increasingly bright, increasingly able and harder working people than you, at some point, the mind revolts. You say: "Well, damn. Screw that. I'm not really interested in it anyway. I'm not going to read the books for this term. I'm far more interested in reading the entire works of Thomas Nash." Because you can't face being judged, and that is the real act of cowardice.

Crescent Blues: You've obviously overcome the fear of being judged any extreme self-criticism in terms of your performances. Or have you?

John Rhys-Davies: Well, most of it. Acting is pretty schizophrenic in so many ways, and there's no point in being majorly upset over something that is peripheral and insignificant. On the other hand, you should have certain standards, and you should try to keep them up. You should not try to phone in the performance, for example -- though I suspect that all of us do if we stick around long enough.

But there are still times where one is in touch with the lion. Sometimes you just get up there, and you do it. You're listening, and it happens, and you know that you've still got it. You know you've got a whole forest of lions in there, and they ain't tame.

Crescent Blues: What do you do to escape from the lions? What do you do to unwind from your constant schedule? It seems like you work at least 300 days a year.

John Rhys-Davies: I could work 700 days a year if I really chose to. I used to think that was a direct result of my genius. In truth -- and it is, really, the truth -- if you are tall, fat and ugly, and you have a loud voice, you're in a seller's market. There aren't that many fat old men around.

But how does one cut off? I don't have difficulty sleeping. Since I've been a grown-up, and since I've actually made peace with my soul -- I seldom have disturbed sleep. There can be a war going on around me, and I can still go to bed and sleep. I mean that literally.

Crescent Blues: In Bosnia, for example?

John Rhys-Davies: Yes, indeed. Damn him. [Referring to his second and youngest son, who worked as a combat photographer in Bosnia.] I was in Zagreb, watching people scurry and jets flying low over the city and wondering when was the director going to say cut?

But there are things that are important -- how we teach our children to cope with the really tough decisions in life. How we singularly fail to deal with them ourselves, most of the time. How we live with compromise.

When you're a Byronic teenager, the word "compromise" actually brings a phlegm up in your throat, the spittle just… In fact, as you, I think, grow up, you understand -- what's that wonderful line? "Most men live lives of quiet desperation." I think the only thing that keeps the desperation at bay is the ability to sacrifice a certain principle, a certain possession, and hold on to what you regard as fundamental. And to resist the impulse toward martyrdom. [Laughs.]

Orlando Bloom as Legolas in The Fellowship of the Ring. (Photo by Pierre Vinet for New Line Cinema)

Crescent Blues: [Joins in laughter.] Resisting the impulse to martyrdom is always important. What do you consider fundamental?

John Rhys-Davies: [Long, profound sigh.] Things like trying to balance desire against love. Things like not abandoning the really painful positions when that's exactly what you want to do. Standing and fighting. Sifting through the sort of sorry, shabby compromises that you must make in this life to find the little bit of hard ground under your feet, then skipping from that rock to the next.

You have an obligation to show your children that you must not let a tragedy screw up their lives. At the same time, you have to show that there is real responsibility and you have to face it. And you always get that balance wrong. But that said, I'm pretty damn proud of my sons, and they are at least fairly understanding of me as they grow older.

For myself, traveling in the great circle of life, I find that I loathe the cliches that I once endorsed. The government is bad. Big business is bad. Soldiers -- the military is always bad. These are the constant cliches of television and modern entertainment. And these cliches are generally peddled by the sons of millionaire ex-communists, who can afford their comfortable, unthinking liberalism without any sort of glimmer of conscience. I think the world is more complicated and interesting because of it.

Crescent Blues: That would've been a very radical position for you to take when you were in school if, as I understand it, you attended university in the '60s

John Rhys-Davies: Indeed so. I also became very aware of the fact of how our moods and thoughts were being very carefully created and manipulated. When you're young and radical, you're sort of vaguely aware of that in the back of your mind, but you think it's OK, because their heart's in the right place.

In the end, when you look at the chaos and mess that resulted from the causes you supported… It's impossible to think now that Vietnam is truly any better off under the Communists than they would've been under the status quo. And the cost of human life in other places is just unconscionable. One should never have tolerated it -- or thought about it. Damn it, sometimes, those wise old men really were wise old men, and iconoclasm is not necessarily always in the best interest of mankind.

Crescent Blues: This gets back to the whole notion of the importance of heroes.

Uruk-Hai battle for blood in The Fellowship of the Ring. (Photo by Pierre Vinet for New Line Cinema)

John Rhys-Davies: Yes, it does.

Crescent Blues: Who do you consider the fictional and real-life heroes of the last quarter century? Or is it too soon to tell?

John Rhys-Davies: There's a great story about Chou En Lai, was basically foreign minister of China for forty years. In 1989 [the bicentennial of the French Revolution], someone asked him what he considered to be the significance of the French Revolution. Chou En Lai paused for a second and said, "It's too soon to tell." But that's a different historical perspective.

Star Trek -- I'm sure that there are already astronauts who became astronauts as a result of that show.

Crescent Blues: There are.

John Rhys-Davies: They're all Trekkies at heart, basically. And just think of the values [Gene] Roddenberry was embracing. Those were real high-end ideals. You had duties to the crew. You had duties to Earth, but you also had duties to life wherever it existed, and that you should respect other ways of doing things. That tolerance did not necessarily mean absolute acceptance of the intolerable. There is always a conflict between principle and the actual practice of principle.

I know that one of these days there's going to be a space cadet corps. They'll be looking at some of these old shows, and they'll laugh their heads off. But some of it will stick, because really, in our heart of hearts, we are a wonderful and destructive species. But we are aware of the fact that we have murderous and dangerous impulses. We also have pretty noble desires and interests as well.

I'm basically a monarchist and a Welshman, and my fealty is sworn to my prince and his ma'am, but I love this country. I mean real America, not bloody New York or bloody L.A., but the real, great, good, golden heart of it is so sound. It really is the last, best hope of mankind in so many ways. The crassness I used to abhor when I was a very sophisticated teenager I see now as that great virtue of actually knowing what you can be. I don't care if your beliefs are different from mine, but having the courage to see them through, stand and be counted, and be tolerant up to the point where it gets semi-ridiculous and then make a stand. I think these are virtues that frequently Europe has forgotten, but America, God bless it, still keeps in its heart.

To get back to the real question now: who are the heroes? Who are the heroes?

Crescent Blues: Who do you consider a hero? What names spring to your mind when you think of the word "hero?"

John Rhys-Davies: Oh, Buzz Aldrin. I mean, those guys were so bloody cool. Nowadays, CNN doesn't even tell you who the astronauts are that have gone up. They aren't giving their names anymore. And to a certain extent NASA has lost its real driving goals and ambitions. I still can't get over it. I can still hear [John F.] Kennedy making that speech: "We'll put a man on the moon in the next ten years." And fight a major war. And hold the continent of Europe ready against…

The smaller nations whose bright and articulate politicians complain about the unilateralism of America have really no idea just how enormously strong and powerful America is. That is not to say I will not criticize America. I think some of those bloody wars that were fought in the Balkans were started to distract from internal politics, and I don't necessarily believe there was any sense or history in them. You should've stopped Milosovic very early on, about the time Slovenia and Croatia were breaking away. But to then intervene unilaterally in a civil war -- it completely abrogates the point of N.A.T.O.

Oh, I'm so off the point, aren't I?

Crescent Blues: Not really, the subject of war and heroes makes a great segue to Lord of the Rings. Did you choose Gimli or did Gimli choose you?

John Rhys-Davies: [Laughs.] I wanted to be Barliman Butterbur. I wanted to go to New Zealand (a country I'd never worked in before) spend maybe two, three, four or five weeks, maybe a couple of months, on the film, have a jolly nice time and get back and get on with other things.

In fact when I was offered Gimli by my agent, I said, "You're joking. I'm not going to spend six hours a day in make-up…."

John Rhys-Davies: Traveling the Great Circle (Part 2)

Jean Marie Ward and Teri Smith

Click here to learn more about John Rhys-Davies and The Fellowship of the Ring, episode one of Lord of the Rings.

Readers Respond

Regarding Iain Cuthbertson,
I'd just like to point out that John Rhys-Davis is wrong in saying that Iain Cuthbertson is dead. Iain is alive, well and living quietly in Scotland -- he will be 74 on 4th January 2004.

Mary Cuthbertson

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