Wood's 'Two Towers'

A Professional Metamorphosis

(CBS)  In "Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers," Elijah Wood returns as hobbit Frodo Baggins, continuing his journey to bring the ring to Mordor, where it must be destroyed in order to save the world.

"This film really from, you know, the beginning to the end is quite action packed and quite adventurous. And I think that people who haven't seen the first, and don't know the books will just enjoy it as simply a great adventure story," Wood says.

The biggest difference between the two movies is that “The Two Towers” is “really visceral,” says Wood. “It's very action-oriented. It's a lot darker. But at the same time, I think it also gets you involved with the individual characters a little bit more than the first movie, which was kind of, it bunched the characters into the Fellowship. So, I don't think you got a full idea of everyone individually. Whereas, everybody's split up now.”

With most of the cast separated, Wood spends most of his screen time with actor Sean Astin and a computer generated creature named Gollum. Director Peter Jackson wanted an actor to actually create the character. That job went to Andy Serkis.

"All of the physicalities that you see of Gollum on screen are Andy. Because he went into a motion capture studio, and captured all of his motion. And that was put into the computer. So, the image that you see is Andy without being Andy,” explains Wood. “And he was on set every day for all those scenes. And we'd run through the scenes with him. And then he would go off screen, do the dialogue. And then Sean and I would act with nothing. It was just another process that we had to get used to.”

So much of the story is told in close-ups of Wood, and the scenes were not likely to be shot in a sequence. How did the actor keep it all together in his mind?

“The filming process was so disjointed," Wood confirms. "So, we were filming scenes from film Three one day, film One the next day. You get a full idea of your individual character's journey, which I think if you were to allow yourself to become all encompassed by the entirety of the project, I think you would become overwhelmed. So, any time that I had to sort of remember what to react to, and what I was feeling, I just kind of focus on my individual journey. And not become overwhelmed by everything else around me."

A year ago, no one really had a clue “The Lord of the Rings” was going to be such a huge hit, grossing almost $1 billion. Wood says the reaction, "was very overwhelming. And kind of mad, you know? Because we were, a part of this film that for us was a very intimate experience, and suddenly it was this huge thing. Then the movie came out. And was massively successful. And initially, it's a weird thing. I'm not used to being a part of something so huge."

Wood says his professional life has going through a sort of “metamorphosis and change, and growth. Not huge. But it has changed my life. I'm certainly more recognizable than I've ever been. And so, there's definitely those things that I have to adapt to, which has been interesting. But not difficult. Not terrible.”

So what's next for the actor?

"I want to keep doing what I do, keep growing and changing," Wood says. "And taking roles that aren't exactly like things I've done in the past. Things that are a little older, maybe a little darker. But also, I'd love to produce and eventually direct. I love so many elements about what I do. And I love so many elements about film making in general. So, there isn't a whole lot that I don't want to do."