LOTR veteran celebrates birthday with distinctive athletic feat in New Zealand harbor.
Bruce Hopkins, who played Gamling in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, performs 69 backflips off a diving board for his 69th birthday in another feat of pure athleticism. He popped in TORN Tuesday this past week to talk about motivation and giving back.
Gamling Gives Back
This year’s beneficial charity is Grandparent Raising Grandchildren, which supports families during rough spots in parents’ lives. The organization helps elderly grandparents who are acting as parents navigate government systems to receive financial support to raise kids. Says Bruce: “What GRG does … and they are a very lean operation, it’s not like a big massive charity: the main thing they do is they lobby on behalf of about 9,000 or 10,000 grandparents to the Government organizations, the Government agencies, who will TURN THEM DOWN, saying ‘You’re direct family, you don’t qualify for assistance for school uniforms, school fees, or whatever.’ So Grandparents Raising Grandchildren will go in and represent them to access grants and subsidies that they DO qualify for that they were told THEY DON’T qualify for!”
The difficult circumstances of having Parents (who are themselves unable to deliver care because of struggles with addiction, etc.) is often mitigated by Grandparents who ably step in for the children’s sake. Bruce is correct in identifying this charity as extremely helpful for the elderly who often have limited means on their own as they take on the extra burden of raising these kids while the direct parents are missing-in-action, incarcerated, or unavailable.
We at TheOneRing.net have, over the years, donated any proceeds we have to literature orgs in New Zealand schools so we thoroughly support Bruce’s efforts here.
A few years ago, Hopkins made waves with a long hike – the Fellowship hike to be exact. He became the first LOTR actor to actually travel the full 3,000 km distance that Frodo & Sam journey in LOTR on the Te Araroa trail. Hopkins documented his journey, and according to RNZ Radio New Zealand it is one of their most popular podcast series.
Surprise Andy Serkis Reveal
During the conversation, Hopkins reveals that he worked with Andy Serkis on the video game HEAVENLY SWORD. Back in 2006 during production on the game Serkis asked only TWO local cast members from LOTR to join the video game to perform motion-capture: Jed Brophy and Bruce Hopkins himself. Discussing the efforts on the game Bruce says: “It was really early days of WETA, they were *totally experimenting* on how to do this; they didn’t know themselves! Like on LOTR they were making this up … We did some rehearsals for a couple of days … and then we went and shot stuff with a couple of other actors who came from around the world … It was just so wonderful.”
Return to Middle-earth?
When asked about the current vibe in NZ for new Middle-earth films, Bruce is just as excited as fans. Now we are all aware Andy Serkis and his team are gearing up for the new live-action LOTR film “The Hunt For Gollum” and Bruce expresses his enthusiasm to work in any role that allows him to return to Middle-earth. “Gamling didn’t die! I’ll help hunt that bloody Gollum down!”
Watch the surprise drop-in interview on our YouTube archive of TORn Tuesday (starts at 1 hr 8 min.):
