Adrien Brody Heavily Regrets Turning Down ‘The Lord of the Rings’

When The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring hit theaters in 2001, Adrien Brody was still a year away from releasing the critically acclaimed film The Pianist, but he was already an established actor in Hollywood, with over a decade-long career behind him. Thus, it is not strange that Peter Jackson and the team of the successful trilogy contacted him to offer him a role in the saga.

This was revealed by the actor in an interview for GQ, in which he confessed that he turned down the project and, after watching the film in theaters, he immediately regretted it. As a reminder, Brody would eventually meet Jackson four years later, working on King Kong.

“I, somehow, didn’t grasp it,” the actor recounted on this missed opportunity. “I don’t know what part I would have been right for, but it was some Hobbit-like character. I was looking for something else.” Although the offer didn’t appeal to him at that time, he admits that he regrets his decision.

“I remember going to see Lord of the Rings in the theater with an ex-girlfriend. And she turned to me and said, ‘You passed on Lord of the Rings?!’” he recalled. “I remember feeling so stupid. But I don’t think I would have gotten the role of Jack in Peter’s [King Kong]. I don’t think that would have translated.”

In the interview, Brody admits that King Kong was a wonderful experience in which he learned about big-budget movies and epic tales. “We had a premiere in Times Square and they shut down all of Times Square,” he told. “The mayor was there and introduced us to the city. It was a big deal. My face was immortalized on a McDonald’s soda cup. When does that happen for anyone?”

Although the actor missed his chance to be in The Lord of the Rings, he has continued to work tirelessly and on October 22 he will be in The French Dispatch, the latest movie from his long-time collaborator Wes Anderson, with whom he works again after The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Grand Budapest Hotel. He will also star in Asteroid City, the movie that Anderson recently shot in Madrid, Spain.