There and Back Again (17 page)

My mind had not been on work that day. Christine and I had gone forward with plans to purchase our dream house, and we had closed escrow that very morning. Scrawling my signature on the contract, I felt a maelstrom of conflicting emotions brewing in my stomach, everything from joy to dread. Like anyone who buys a new home, I was thinking about it a lot. Of course, Christine is an amazing workhorse, so she shouldered much of the burden. For her, every day was filled with the minutiae of real estate transactions: phone calls to lawyers, brokers, and bankers; estimates from moving companies; packing, unpacking, shedding the detritus of a life in transition. As the closing date grew near, fretting about whether I'd be able to earn enough money to support our new home and lifestyle became not just an occasional emotional indulgence, but a perpetual state of being. I was constantly trying to figure out which deals were about to close, and which ones were likely to fall through; whether it made more sense to try to build our company or just take the first acting gig that came along. What I felt, more than anything else, was pressure. Intense pressure.

And now, here was a phone call that held the promise of something great. Christine stood next to me as we waited for the news.

Remember I said earlier that it's always nice when an agent calls? Well, when two agents call, it's never bad news. Two agents call because they want to celebrate with you. Nikki Mirisch was my feature-film agent, the point person in my movie career. Mark Schwartz had handled my television work. Now they were on the line together, screaming, each trying to outshout the other.

“You got it, Sean! You got the job.”

That was the good news—the
great
news, actually. But there was at least a small piece of bad news, although it wasn't presented to me as such. You see, while New Line understood the necessity of spending great gobs of money on what would prove to be groundbreaking visual effects and a landmark cinematic achievement, they did not necessarily see the logic in splurging on actors' salaries. My fee, I was told, would be $250,000.

All right, I can live with that. Three movies … that's $750,000. I'm covered for the next three years
.

“Uh, Sean?”

“Yeah.”

“The offer is $250,000—total.”

I was shocked. A total of $250,000 for three films and up to two years of uninterrupted work, during which time I'd be unable to accept any other offers. And it would be several months before I'd receive a penny.

Oh, no, I just bought a new house, and now I'm going to take a cut in salary
?

I didn't whine for long, in part because Mark and Nikki wouldn't allow it. We all agreed that compensation notwithstanding, this was the opportunity of a lifetime. When I got off the phone, I literally fell to my knees and cried, and began to say a prayer of thanks. Then I looked at Christine and Jeff, who were smiling and obviously happy for me. I thought,
Life is going to change, man. These offices aren't going to be here, and Jeff … you're not going to be working for me. Everything will be different.

I remember once seeing videotape of a woman collapsing to the ground as she approached the end of a marathon and then, flopping and flailing like a wounded animal, crawling across the finish line as the crowd stood and cheered. She was at once an object of pity and admiration, a profile in desperation and courage. That's the way I felt. As a man, as a father, as someone who was trying to survive in a career, and as someone who was trying to pretend that he had more influence than he really did. I had begun to question my own strength and determination and talent. I wondered if failure was suddenly an option.

But no more. With a single call, everything had changed. There was no question that
The Lord of the Rings
was going to be one of the greatest experiences of my life. I don't think, however, that I really understood what that meant; how could I? Sure, I knew it would be an epic adventure in New Zealand, with Peter Jackson and an incredible franchise, with its millions of fans; because of those things, I knew it was going to be big. Whatever else it might be, it was certainly going to be big. There was, however, no frame of reference, no way to anticipate what the experience was going to be like. For me, it was more about thinking,
Thank God, I'm going to be able to feed my wife and daughter; they'll be proud of me.

They'd also get to share in the adventure, which was a bonus. One of the things Peter had sought to ascertain during the audition was my attitude toward what could euphemistically be termed “location work.”

“You know, we're filming this whole thing in New Zealand,” he had said. “And it's going to take some time. Probably a year and a half. Is that a problem?”

Peter and the producers were very clever about doling out information and getting information. They wanted to know how each participant felt about working on such an unusual project. For Peter, a part of the selection process boiled down to a simple question:
Are we going to be able to live with this person? Is he going to be able to come into our family and survive and not make everybody miserable?
It was an important consideration, and one that was obviously addressed with great care, because there was so much cohesion on the set. Not that there weren't problems. As in any “family,” tempers occasionally flared and personalities bumped up against each other and created friction. In the end, though, respect and love (for each other and the film) triumphed over greed and egotism, and that's a rare accomplishment in any movie, let alone the most ambitious movie in history. When Peter revealed the timetable, I didn't blink.

“You won't have to ask twice,” I said. “It's not an issue for me.”

That would prove to be a naive response, but it seemed reasonable at the time. I'd been to New Zealand and had worked on
White Water Summer
with some of the people Peter knew. In fact, on the day I arrived in New Zealand for
The Lord of the Rings
, I ran into a guy at Peter's house who looked somewhat familiar. I couldn't place him at first, but he ambled right up to me, gave me a pat on the back, and said, “Hey, Sean, how you doin'?” After talking for a few minutes, I realized who he was: a buddy of Peter's—a fellow Kiwi, of course—named Dan Hannah. Dan was a member of the set crew on
White Water Summer.
He'd built a suspension bridge from which I was supposed to take a fall. I hadn't seen him in a dozen years, and now here he was, at Peter's house, returning a pile of videos he'd borrowed. So before I even landed the role, I felt comfortable with the notion of working and living in New Zealand for eighteen months. In a sense, I felt like I'd already been to Rivendell and Hobbiton.

I reviewed the offer with Christine. Predictably, since she's one who appreciates a good adventure, she just smiled and said, “Let's do it. It'll be a great experience for the whole family.”

In some ways, Christine was more excited than I was about the prospect of moving to New Zealand. We'd experienced some serious losses in the previous few years. Christine's father, who suffered from manic depression, had taken his own life; a friend had been murdered. But my wife is sort of a Ramblin' Rose: when things happen in her life, she allows herself to adjust and to move on. She grieves and she cries, but she retains her faith and her belief in the inherent goodness of people. I'm a compulsive worrier; Christine is an unbridled optimist. She's a pretty amazing woman in that way. She saw going to New Zealand as an incredible opportunity and instinctively knew that it would be something wonderful for all of us.

There wasn't even that much discussion about it. I think Christine felt that this job offer represented a logical progression in my career. During the low moments of my life, I've often looked to Christine for confirmation of my pessimism, for support of the notion that
this is bad and it's going to get worse and why don't I just get the hell out of this business?
But it never happens. In marriage, I think, the unspoken can be as powerful as the spoken. I felt strength and approval from Christine. I had explained to her what I wanted to accomplish with my life and career, and she had believed in me. Now, with the offer to play Sam on the table, she would have to do an even better job of convincing me that she still believed in me. And she didn't have to work that hard. Christine's worries tend to lean more toward the philosophical and spiritual:
Am I appreciating it?
That's a sentiment she uses a lot.

“It's going to be over so fast, Sean,” she'll say. “Try to enjoy it.”

Christine sees time racing by and wants to absorb it, to slow it down and figure it out, and make sure she isn't missing anything. So when I run around like a chicken with my head cut off, she just sits there quietly, smiling, saying, “You know, hon, we're going to be in rocking chairs before we know it.” She knew before I did that this job and this adventure would be one of those life-altering experiences, and on the other side of it we'd both end up better. During the deal, as I fretted about money and time and commitment, Christine was bemused.

“Do you have any concept of what you're talking about?” she asked. “Do you have any idea of the magnitude of this project, as compared to the stuff you're bickering over?”

“Uhhhhh…”

“Well, do you? You moron.”

I did, of course, somewhere deep in my bones. But I needed to be reminded. I needed Christine as a barometer.

That said, it wasn't until three or four months down under that I realized what I had committed to. There was no possible way to know just how demanding and consuming a job it would be. I was also looking at it like this:
My daughter is two, and she'll be four or five when this is all through, and seven when the last movie comes out.
I didn't understand the sheer, groundbreaking enormity of it, and how that would affect all of us on a day-to-day basis. Even the way my agents explained the negotiations—“You'll be paid for each film, but it's all one job”—provoked a certain blind response. I was looking at it as one film. I said, “What's the total compensation?” I didn't understand the significance of the individual films. In my mind, I just blocked off a chunk of time—a year and a half—without giving too much consideration to the layers of nuance involved with the nature of time as it was going to relate to my experience on the pictures.

My attorney, Dave Feldman, was working hard to get me a favorable deal, but I sensed that the “times” on the contract would bear little resemblance to what we actually did. I think it's fair to say that the project was like a supernova blighting many of the finer points in the deal as it pertained to actual time worked. The assumption was, “Listen, they're not gonna kill you; they need you!” Still, a contract was necessary, and very smart people worked hard to make the legal language match the reality we were going to experience. What I'm talking about here is the way the contract was structured to allow for the production's
ownership
of my time. On some level I expected to go down to New Zealand and give myself over to Peter. One of my more endearing qualities (I make people crazy!) is that somehow I used to believe that I could give myself
completely
over to a project, while retaining an inordinate amount of faith that I could do fifty other things simultaneously. When most people would relax or take up a hobby or rededicate themselves to a given assignment, I'm usually just getting warmed up. My mom used to tell me, “Sean, you can't do it all. You can't have everything all at once!” I love my mom and she may be right, but I've yet to be totally convinced.

Anyway, at the time I was in negotiations with New Line to play Sam, the agents and lawyers were working hard to interpret the contract, especially as it related to time commitments, because essentially we were making a deal ahead of time, and nothing like this had ever been done before.
The Lord of the Rings
was conceived as a trilogy from a marketing standpoint, but it's really one movie sliced into three movies. New Line figured out how to make it beneficial to them all the way through, and thank God they did, because if they hadn't, we couldn't have gotten the movie made. The studio deserves credit, and so do the actors and the directors and the writers and the crew and … everyone.

It's my guess that virtually everyone accepted less money upfront than they had earned before, or less than they could have if they had chosen to work on something else. In some way, we all understood that this was an opportunity to do something special. There was a feeling of frustration and exhaustion that permeated the entire project, and yet no one would admit to it, in part because of job security and in part because we realized the sacrifices were worth it. In low moments, when I was worried or frustrated about money, because of the house or other factors beyond my control, because my body was bloated and I was tired and homesick or just plain sick—in those moments, the money issue was a problem for me. Yes, I had entered into the contract with my eyes open. Nevertheless, I was at times bothered by what I considered to be an unfair deal. The work was exhausting and endless, and the financial reward insufficient. I didn't blame this on the studio or on Peter Jackson. I blamed it on the circumstances, and sometimes I blamed it on myself.

I like to think that I'm a professional, that I'm on time, that I give my bosses what they want. I can do foot soldier as well as anyone. I am not a prima donna. But I do remember a couple of times this feeling washing over me, a kind of panic or claustrophobia, and thinking,
What if my body won't do this?
My consciousness hadn't approached thinking about calling in sick or asking for more sleep. That's the purview of rock stars, not actors. And certainly not actors at my level. In the beginning I had made a promise:
I'm going to give myself over to this process and trust that these are good, decent people and that their artistry is so worthy of sacrifice that I'll come out of it on the other end saying, “Look what I've accomplished!”