There and Back Again

by Sean Astin

  “Those fucking assholes!” one of them said later that morning, referring to the mysterious Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which chooses the Golden Globe nominees and winners. “How dare they!”

  Yeah, he was pretty pissed off. And legitimately surprised. New Line executives thought I was a shoo-in for a Golden Globe nomination, especially since they had been told that I was runner-up to Eugene Levy in the arguably far more prestigious and competitive New York Film Critics Circle Awards. I still don’t know if that was true or not. I know only that the Golden Globes came and went, and the Oscar buzz began to diminish.

  Next came the nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Awards. This was vastly more important to me because the nominees were selected by my peers in the union. Christine set the alarm for 6 A.M. and we got up together and watched the announcements live on television. I was groggy and tired, and I kept telling Christine, “Honey, it’s not going to happen,” not because I was hypersensitive or because I was trying to dilute the potential disappointment. I just had a feeling it wasn’t going to happen. And it didn’t. Although The Return of the King was nominated for best acting by an ensemble, the film received no individual acting nominations, which left me feeling somewhat conflicted: I was happy for the cast, and disappointed for myself. We deserved recognition in the ensemble category, of course, but I had clung to an unspoken hope that I’d get singled out and that perhaps a SAG nomination would start the trend toward an Academy Award nomination.

  Christine gave me a hug and we walked together into the kitchen, where Ali was busily eating her cinnamon toast.

  “Hey, guess what?” Christine said. “The nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Awards were just announced, and Daddy and the rest of the cast got nominated for the ensemble award.”

  Ali looked up, fork in hand. “What does ‘ensemble’ mean?”

  Christine smiled. “It means you’re part of a big group.”

  Ali glanced at me and nodded soberly. “Oh,” she said, a trace of disdain in her voice. “It’s so nice to be part of a group.”

  We were floored. Here was my seven-year-old daughter, reflecting my disappointment. So we laughed it off, and that was that. I took Ali to school and along the way reiterated my pleasure with the SAG ensemble award. That was important, I told her. It was meaningful. And this time she agreed.

  * * *

  The Academy Award nominations were announced on January 26. I did nothing special to prepare, nothing to sway the Oscar karma. More than a decade earlier, when I discovered that my first short film was being considered for a nomination, I had driven up into the Hollywood hills with a couple of colleagues and sat there in front of the Hollywood sign and swore to the movie gods. “I promise to use an Academy Award for good, not for ill!” The nomination was really meaningful to me then. It was important, and the next morning when the announcements came out and I wasn’t nominated, I was really disappointed. I moved on, and two years later I got nominated for Kangaroo Court, and that was a great moment. But it was funny. Weeks before that nomination, I wasn’t even thinking about it. Christine and I were in college, working hard. My mind was elsewhere. I found out about the nomination through a phone call from the writer of the film. And that led me to wonder, Is there a moral here? Like, if you’re thinking about it and hoping for it, it won’t happen, but if you’re really about the business of doing something more meaningful and valuable with your life, then that kind of acknowledgment will come to you.

  It’s like watching a sporting event. You sometimes wonder if you can have an impact on the outcome simply by watching it or not watching it. It’s about superstition, and it’s fundamentally ridiculous, although I think we all fall prey to it once in a while. Maybe I did. More than just a little bit. But I wouldn’t call it more than a recurring fantasy. I tried as much as possible to divest myself of the speculation and oddsmaking, although the barrage of information was hard to avoid. I received dozens of calls and messages saying, “You deserve a nomination.” Online polls were enthusiastic in their support of Sam. Critics were divided. There seemed a reasonable chance. The night before the nominations were announced brought more phone calls: from studio executives, family members, agents and managers and publicists. Joel Stevens, my manager, wanted to know where I’d be in the morning, when the nominations came in, so that he could get in touch with me immediately.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll call you.”

  I made no specific plans. The nominations were to be announced on live television at 5:30 A.M. Pacific Standard Time. There was no need to set the alarm. I figured if I woke up comfortably and the sun was already rising in the sky, I’d have my answer: no nomination. If there was a nomination, someone would call. Either way, I wouldn’t have to live through it in real time.

  I woke up a few times during the night, and as dawn approached I began actively dreaming. I was in that fugue state where you’re half asleep, half awake. I dreamed that I got nominated; then I dreamed that I didn’t get nominated. When the cycle completed itself, I opened my eyes, lifted my head, and saw that the room was empty. The house was quiet. Outside, darkness had given way to light. I looked at the clock: it was 6:53.

  And I knew.

  I rolled out of bed, put on my bathrobe, and wandered downstairs and into the kitchen, where Christine was standing at the center island, looking over some paperwork, sipping a cup of coffee. Our eyes met for just a second. Christine shook her head. I nodded, smiled, and walked into another room, my office, and turned on the TV. The pain was not acute. It was more like, Okay, well, let’s see who got nominated.

  You know what? They were all good. Really good and deserving actors in strong, memorable performances: Djimon Hounsou (In America), Tim Robbins (Mystic River), Benicio Del Toro (21 Grams), Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai), and Alec Baldwin (The Cooler). Can I honestly say that my work was any more deserving of recognition than theirs? Can I point to one of those men and say, Why him and not me? Absolutely not. In fact, I could look at that list and ask, Where is Eugene Levy? Where is Paul Bettany (Master and Commander)? That’s the thing about the Academy Awards: they are almost by definition unfair. There is no objective standard by which to measure great acting. Never has been, never will be. Most actors understand the inherent flaw of the Oscars, but give themselves over to it anyway—especially if they’re lucky enough to get nominated. I won’t lie: it would have been a kick to sit there in the Kodak Theater on Oscar night and hear my name read aloud, to hold my breath and try to maintain my composure as the envelope was opened. That’s a dream for any actor. But now that it hadn’t come true, well, I was oddly unaffected.

  Time to get on with the business of life.

  Others in my orbit were less sanguine. That day brought dozens of sympathetic phone calls from friends and relatives and business associates. My mother was the most persistent. She was in Los Angeles working on a movie, and she left a bunch of messages on my cell phone. Mom was all wrapped up in the Oscar race, far more than I was. I later found out that there was even a story in Mom’s local newspaper detailing her efforts to bring good fortune my way. She’d purchased a statue of Sam from Weta, and in the days leading up to the unveiling of the nominations, she’d placed the statue just inches from the Oscar she’d won decades earlier for The Miracle Worker, in the hope that it would bring good luck. Not surprisingly, Mom was a wreck when she learned I hadn’t been nominated. She hadn’t slept all night and had stood in front of the television at 5:30 in the morning screaming her lungs out as the nominations were announced.

  “Your mother has called eight or nine times,” Christine said. “You’d better get in touch with her.”

  So I phoned her, and of course she was devastated. “I’m sorry, honey. It’s so unfair. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Mom. Don’t worry.”

  The truth is, I didn’t value the nomination to the extent that she did. In my heart of hearts, I was okay. The Academy snub, as it was sometimes called,
became a big subject of discussion in my corner of the universe, primarily because the studio had invested a lot of money in its Oscar campaign, and because there were legitimate career ramifications. Ultimately, though, in terms of what’s really important, I discovered that it wasn’t all that valuable to me; it wasn’t that big a deal. All of this I communicated to my mother, who seemed at once bewildered and relieved.

  “Oh, Sean,” she responded proudly, “you’re so well adjusted.”

  I’m trying, Mom … I’m trying.

  EPILOGUE

  As I write this in the early spring of 2004, I can honestly say that my life has never been better, never more filled with hope and promise. The awards season came and went, and I found myself taking great pride in the accomplishments of everyone involved in The Lord of the Rings. We won the acting ensemble award at the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) Awards, and I was almost surprised by how good it felt to stand there on the stage, to be part of a team and to be recognized as a team. There was legitimate honor to it. And there was dignity in the sharing of it.

  Bernard Hill spoke first on our behalf, and then introduced me as “the next president of the United States.” I used my brief time at the microphone to implore my fellow SAG members to put aside the bickering and partisanship that too often divide a labor movement, and that threaten the core of SAG. It didn’t come across too well on television, but I was challenging the stars in the room to be more involved. Before I could complete that sentiment, however, I was nudged out of the way by John Rhys-Davies. A few media accounts focused on that event, as if it signified a rift in the Fellowship. But it didn’t. John sometimes referred to us as the “dysfunctional ensemble,” and he was right. To an extent we were a family, and I don’t know of any family that isn’t dysfunctional. John was just being John, and I love him. (Although not evident in the broadcast, it was amusing the way John bumped me; it was the perfect bookend to Bernard’s introduction of me, and I responded well. Off camera, but well.)

  But that’s not what I will remember about the night. I will remember holding the award and carrying it around all night, and remarking on how heavy it was, and thinking that it represented the exact weight of the accomplishment. There was no regret or sadness about the Oscars, only satisfaction that we had been honored as a group, which was precisely the way it should have been.

  If John hadn’t bumped me offstage, here’s what I would have added: “To the fans who were disappointed that I personally didn’t get nominated for an Oscar, please understand that given the disparate talents that came together in the making of The Lord of the Rings, nothing could be more meaningful to me than a Screen Actors Guild Award in the ensemble category.”

  Granted, it would be nice if ensemble performances were recognized at the Academy Awards, and perhaps that will happen in the future. Still, it’s hard to imagine Oscar night being any more rewarding than it was on February 29, 2004, when The Return of the King won eleven awards, tying the all-time record. And unlike The Return of the King, neither of the previous record holders, Ben Hur (1959) and Titanic (1997), had the distinction of winning in every category in which it was nominated.

  The parade of Kiwis began early, with predictable and entirely deserved recognition in a host of technical categories. This didn’t surprise anyone. Whatever else one might have thought about the trilogy, it was hard, if not impossible, to deny that it was a triumph of technological and design achievement. Not until the award for best adapted screenplay did I start to get nervous. You could feel the room starting to get sick of everyone associated with The Lord of the Rings about two awards before that, and as the nominees were read, I looked over at Philippa Boyens. Philippa is such a rock; she’s so emotionally strong and stable that it’s easy to take her for granted. Now, though, as we reached the category in which she personally was nominated, I had this horrible sinking feeling that the night was going to shift and it would all come down on her head. Philippa’s category would represent a sea change, and from that point on, with the technical awards behind us, the night would belong to one of the other nominated films, either Mystic River or Lost in Translation.

  I reached over and held Philippa’s hand. She smiled, but I could tell she was nervous. Then they announced her name (as well as the names of her cowriters, Peter and Fran), and I thought, My God, it’s going to be a sweep! I think everybody felt that way. It was like watching a no-hitter in baseball: in a way, it’s boring as hell, but then in the last two innings it gets really exciting because you don’t want anyone to get a hit.

  In accepting the award, Peter mentioned his two children, Billy and Katie; he thanked them, in essence, for their patience, because “Mommy and Daddy have been working on this movie for their entire lives.” With those words, I think, Peter won the room. You could see the heads bobbing in agreement, as if the magnitude of the effort and accomplishment had been driven home: You know what? He deserves it.

  Peter shambled to the stage again a few minutes later to accept the award for directing, and then once more at the end of the night when The Return of the King was honored as best picture. I held my breath before the last of the awards, worrying for just a moment or two that something freakish might happen, and the perfect game would come to an end. But that didn’t happen. When the winner was announced, Peter and Fran and producer Barrie Osborne rose from their seats. I was sitting between Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan; at the end of the row, closest to the aisle, was Elijah Wood. Before walking to the stage, Fran turned to me and said, “Let’s go; the hobbits have to come with us.”

  Elijah raised his hands in protest. “No, no. This is yours. I can’t go up there.”

  But then Peter got into the act. And Fran and Philippa and half of New Zealand, it seemed, and suddenly there we all were, up on stage, crying and laughing and hugging. It’s hard to explain how it felt to climb the stairs and stand on that stage. It was an electric moment of arrival. It felt important. But it wasn’t about me. It was about being part of something much bigger: the idea that when you walk into the Kodak Theater, you pass these massive pillars on which is inscribed the name of each film that has been honored with an Academy Award for best picture. As long as that building survives, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, of which I am a not insignificant part, will be on those pillars.

  I exited the stage alongside Steven Spielberg, who had presented the award for best picture. Don’t ask me why, but for some reason this is what I said to him: “You know how many people want us to make Goonies II?”

  Steven shook his head and laughed. “Come on, Sean, you guys just made history tonight. Let’s not talk about The Goonies right now.”

  A few seconds later, my cell phone rang.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Honey, I’m so proud of you. You were the heart of that movie, and you were the heart of the awards show tonight.”

  “Oh, Mom, stop!”

  “No, really. You were!”

  “I love you, Mom. I’ll call you later.”

  In the middle of the chaos, Steven Spielberg began talking to Liv Tyler and me. He said something I will never forget.

  “You know how many kids around the world are happy right now, because the Academy finally agrees with them and has the same sensibilities? They wanted it for Star Wars; they wanted it for Raiders.” He paused for a second.

  “And now the Academy has graduated in its thinking?” I interjected. “And they’ll honor fantasy and science fiction?”

  Steven nodded. A smile crossed his bearded face; even now, in his mid-fifties, he looked like a kid.

  “Yeah. I hope so.”

  * * *

  After both the SAG Awards and the Oscars, when we met the media backstage, we were asked whether the on-screen friendships in The Lord of the Rings had been mirrored in real life. Everyone nodded and offered their own take on the subject. I thought about what Elijah had said years earlier, when we first arrived in New Zealand for preproduction training.

  “Fri
ends for life.”

  At the time I had dismissed his comment as the product of youthful optimism and naïveté. But now I wondered whether he was right after all. It’s nice to think so, anyway.

  Time has a way of distorting memory, of amplifying the good things and muting the bad; nostalgia replaces clear recollection. With each passing year my time in New Zealand seems less arduous, less painful. Every once in a while I’ll pull out a scrapbook and flip through the pages, and I’m surprised at how happy everyone seems to be. The exhaustion and boredom and frustration that were so much a part of the experience—or at least of my experience—are not readily evident. There’s a lesson there, I guess.

  I owe everything to The Lord of the Rings—and to Peter Jackson.

  In the past six months I’ve had a few nice roles: first, in a hugely successful romantic comedy called Fifty First Dates, starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. I also worked for a month in South Africa on David Van Eyssen’s Slipstream, which is a low-budget but innovative project worthy of the time invested. Most recently, I filmed a coming-of-age drama called Smile, about the relationship between an American teen who travels to China with a charitable organization, and a Chinese counterpart who receives surgery to correct a facial deformity. The film, written and directed by Jeff Kramer, a journeyman actor and first-time screenwriter, is based on his daughter’s experiences with Operation Smile, an organization that helps provide funding and services for children who need reconstructive facial surgery. Jeff started out a quarter century ago in the touring company of Grease and has done a lot of television and theater work through the years. He never quite made it big as an actor, but now, through optimism and persistence, he’s done this film, and it’s the realization of a lifelong dream. His daughter was there on the set, and the righteousness of why he was doing it permeated our experience. It was only a few days of work for me, playing a teacher who inspires and encourages the young woman to get involved in volunteerism, to follow her passion.