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Tolkien-Online reveals young Smeagol has been cast - Lord of the Rings news - J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

August 09, 2000 at 19:24:24

Tolkien Online is reporting that Joel Tobeck, best known internationally among Hercules and Xena fans as the actor who portrayed the sleazy, murderous god Strife, has been cast as the young Smeagol in Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" movies being filmed in New Zealand.

The only place where young Smeagol occurs in the literary storyline is Gandalf's reconstruction of the history of the One Ring for Frodo in "The Shadow of the Past", the second chapter in The Fellowship of the Ring.

Tobeck plays evil well, and he also paired up with Xena star Lucy Lawless in a short film called "Peach" where he played an unfaithful husband who nearly betrayed his wife with Lucy's character, a mysterious woman who proceeded to set the screen on fire with the actress portraying Tobeck's wife and a peach (in the most erotic non-sexual scene this writer has ever viewed).

Tobeck, like many other New Zealand actors, is also a member of the Shortland Street family, having appeared on the internationally distributed New Zealand soap opera as Craig Develter in 1994 and 1995.

In an odd credit, Tobeck's filmography on his International Fan Club Web site indicates he will appear in the second movie, rather than the first. If this information is correct, it may mean that Smeagol's background information will be deferred to "The Two Towers" for dramatic reasons, since providing that information in the first movie would not necessarily move the cinematic storyline forward, and would require audiences to make a detailed connection between the movies that is not normally expected of film audiences.