Photo: Sarah Dunn
You haven’t lived until you’ve heard Martin Freeman and Elijah Wood go head-to-head with their respective Gollum impressions. Woods’ is fairly convincing, just the right blend of rasp and hiss, but Freeman’s, we're sorry to say, sounds like someone pressing a car horn.
“I’m a shit Gollum impersonator,” the Bilbo actor bemoans. “I was doing an interview with Andy for the first time and I was asked and he demanded that I do one. It was awful!” Taking part in a rare double interview and exclusive photoshoot as part of Empire's Peter Jackson-edited January issue, the two compared notes on the saga's defining moments, the good manners of Tolkien fans (Freeman: “All the time I was [shooting], there was maybe one person hanging around outside the gates”) and the differences between their respective Bagginses. You can read the full account of their encounter in the new issue of Empire, on sale now.