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Actor John Astin has revealed he auditioned for the role of Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, saying in a new interview that he tested multiple times to play the wizard. He ultimately did not get the part, but his son, Sean Astin, would be cast as the hobbit Sam in a career-defining role, so the film trilogy end up with an Astin in it.
Speaking to the AV Club, Astin said he had an existing relationship with LOTR’s Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh after working with them on the 1996 horror movie The Frighteners. After that, Astin auditioned for Gandalf, but despite his best efforts, Jackson and Walsh wanted to go in a different direction.
“I tested a few times for Gandalf [in Lord of the Rings]. The last test I did, they gave me something out of the second book, and I studied it and came up with what I thought was a good interpretation of it, but it wasn’t at all what Peter and Fran wanted,” Astin said.
Due to his previous working relationship with Jackson and Walsh, Astin said he felt confident that he could ask them for another audition and they might have agreed. But the more he thought about, Astin said with a laugh that he wasn’t keen on the idea of spending a lot of time riding horses in New Zealand.
“So I just let it be,” Astin said.
The 92-year-old Astin, who starred on the original Addams Family as Gomez, is just the latest big-name actor to have been in the mix for the role of Gandalf. Sean Connery, Patrick Stewart, Sam Neill, and Christopher Plummer were all said to be in the running for the part. Ian McKellan would go on to land the role that he is now perhaps most famous for and one that seems like a natural fit.
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In other news, Amazon’s The Rings of Power premieres September 2 on Prime Video. Season 2 is already in the works, and in a big shift, production is leaving New Zealand and will instead take place in the UK.
As for the video game series, The Lord of the Rings Online recently saw a huge surge in players thanks in part to the game’s 15th anniversary event. Additionally, Electronic Arts just announced it has signed a new deal with Middle-earth Enterprises to create a game called The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth.
