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With two vastly different new movies, "Green Street Hooligans" and "Everything Is Illuminated," opening within a week of one another, Elijah Wood seems ready to take on any acting challenge. But for the 24-year-old veteran of more than two dozen films, the stakes are unusually high. Having inhabited the character of Frodo Baggins — one of the most iconic roles in movie history — in three of the most successful films ever made, Wood now hopes to simply keep making movies that excite him and help him grow as an actor. MTV News' Larry Carroll recently talked with Wood about his filmmaking ambitions, his obligations to his fans and why he's determined not to let "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy define him as a person or as an artist.
MTV: You starred in three of the most critically acclaimed, commercially successful films of all time. Is there any sort of blueprint for your career after that success?
Wood: No, not really. There isn't. You know, I kind of live in the moment, and there are certainly things that I aspire to do. I'd love to produce; I'd love to eventually direct. In terms of my acting career, I kind of take it film to film and find movies and roles that I'm passionate about. It's difficult to have a blueprint. "Lord of the Rings" was such a massive film, and it sort of dominated the public consciousness for so long, that afterwards I was interested in putting myself into roles and films that were completely different. And so far, it's been an interesting journey.
MTV: Both of your new films, "Everything Is Illuminated" and "Green Street Hooligans," feel like movies that you couldn't have made before "Lord of the Rings," even though you'd obviously made lots of movies before the "Rings" trilogy.
Wood: Right. I mean, "Lord of the Rings" was an incredible blessing in a lot of ways; it certainly shaped me as a human being. But it also put me into the public consciousness, in a way that allows me more opportunities as an actor now, which is just incredible.
MTV: Tell us about "Everything Is Illuminated" and "Green Street Hooligans" and the characters you play.
Wood: In "Everything Is Illuminated," I play a character named Jonathan Safran Foer, which is also the name of the author of the book that the movie is based on. He's a young Jewish man who travels to the Ukraine to search for a woman he believes saved his grandfather during the war. He's a sort of socially inept, quite awkward, quite neurotic character living in a way that's rather separated from the outside world. The movie is about his journey across the Ukraine, with two Ukrainian guides, to find this woman.
MTV: And "Green Street Hooligans"? It's obviously very different.
Wood: Yeah. [He laughs.] In "Hooligans" I play a man named Matt Buckner, who is unfairly kicked out of Harvard. He travels to London to visit his sister, and he finds himself in this position in life where he doesn't have any direction, his sense of identity is not very strong, and he meets up with a man who's the brother of his sister's husband. He then falls in with this group of football hooligans, a kind of organized group that [starts fights as their main form of entertainment].
MTV: Was there a plan in choosing these roles?
Wood: No, there's no plan. I mean, it's kind of difficult to be strategic or have a plan when you're sort of at the mercy of whatever work is available. So it's a relatively organic process, trying to choose these films. When "Hooligans" came around, I really loved the material and that I got to be a part of it. The same with "Illuminated" — I loved the script, met with Liev [Schreiber, who wrote the screenplay] and was passionate about working with him and figuring out this character.
MTV: Is there a point where you feel that a connection with your fans is such that you say, "OK, this is a movie I'd want to see. So if I want to see it, my fans would want to see it as well"?
Wood: Yeah, but I think there's something dangerous in overly considering your fans. Not to deny my fans, but I certainly do what I do for myself, because I'm passionate about films and filmmaking, and I want to continue to challenge myself as an actor and keep myself interested, and also play roles that are very different from the last thing that I worked on. And I think that if I were to overly consider my fan base, it may be slightly stifling.
MTV: The only name I can really come up with, when I try to think about anyone who's career can kind of be compared to yours, is Mark Hamill [who played the original Luke Skywalker]. I'm sure you hear that "Star Wars" thing all the time.
Wood: About being a part of a giant trilogy? Yeah. But you know, I certainly don't base my career on somebody else's career, or somebody else's mistakes. I just go on my instinct and what I believe. Of course, being a part of something like ["The Lord of the Rings" or "Star Wars"], there is certainly the possibility that you could end up being typecast or only remembered only for that particular role. But my theory was that as long as I continue to work, and I continue to work in films that are very different, then people would see that I wasn't just that one character.
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