The Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe revealed he has no regrets of turning down the role in Lord of the Rings.
In an interview with British GQ, Crowe, who was initially approached for the role of Aarogorn in the trilogy shared that his conversation with director Peter Jackson turned him off.
Sharing that he ‘don’t’ have any regrets of turning down the role, Crowe said, “I very much felt the studio were making that decision, not the film director.”
He continued, “and I talked to Peter Jackson over the phone, and he wasn’t saying the sort of things that directors were saying to you if they were really trying to attract you to a project. And I just kind of got a sense that he already had somebody else in mind that he wanted to do. And me stepping forward and saying yes was actually going to get in his way.”
“So there’s a nuance in that conversation that other people might not hear — we’re both New Zealanders — in his own way without him saying anything negative, that he had another plan. So I just left it at that,” he further added.
However, the role of Aarogorn in Lord of the Rings trilogy was then passed to Viggo Mortensen.
Peter Jackson is now returning as the producer of new Lord of the Rings film The Hunt for Gollum, scheduled to release in 2026.
