As if we didn’t know that already, the guy BEGGED and PLEADED to get the role, and much to his credit he’s the only one I can see playing Sam, but this report from Damien in Philly really makes me happy. Sean Astin really LOVES everything to do with LOTR! He’s like a proud father! Check out this report:
I ran into Sean Astin about ten minutes ago in an elevator in Philadelphia. I recognized him right off, though he seems to have dropped all the ‘Sam’ weight. I asked him how New Zealand was and he totally lit up and said he loved it. I congratulated him on the role and told him I was glad he got it, since Sam is my favorite character in the story. He was so excited about the movies he was nearly shaking, and he whipped out a little pewter figure of Sam holding a sword and showed it to me. He also showed me the tattoo that the ‘Nine Walkers’ all had (I wanna see those tatoos guys! -Xo). It looked really cool and was written in elvish, but I didn’t ask him to translate.
Sean’s a really nice guy, although he was a lot shorter than I thought, and he had that ‘I know something you don’t know’ look in his eyes when he walked about the film. Just thought I’d send this in as an interesting tidbit.
