There and Back Again (40 page)

“If you really want to do this, I'll support you.”

My primary concern revolved around my daughter. What if by getting a tattoo I was sending the wrong message to Ali? What would I say, ten or twelve years hence, when she strolled into the house with her navel pierced?

“Ali, you really shouldn't disfigure your body that way. It shows a lack of self-respect.”

“Uh, Dad?

“Yes, dear?”

“Don't be such a hypocrite.”

In the end, the thought of that exchange, however unpleasant, wasn't enough to dissuade me. Nor was the fact that my own standard for crumbling to the will of the group—“I'll do it if everyone else does”—had failed to hold up. First of all, Sean Bean, who played Boromir, had already departed, so he was out (in fairness, it should be pointed out that Sean eventually joined the off-screen Fellowship by getting a tattoo during a long night in New York or London—I forget which—with Orlando Bloom). Second, John Rhys-Davies steadfastly refused to participate in such shenanigans, in part, he explained (not entirely without irony), because of an epidemic of mad cow disease that was ravaging Europe: “Why, I wouldn't follow an Englishman behind a needle for all the money in the world!” No matter. In John's stead, an invitation was extended to his scale double, Brett Beattie, who jumped at the opportunity.
6

In retrospect, I think my primary motivation was fear. I couldn't imagine at that point that the movie (or movies) would ever actually come out. I couldn't imagine the movies being completed or anyone ever seeing them or enjoying them, or me being in them. None of my time in New Zealand seemed real. I was getting on a plane to go home, and soon it would all be a memory. At times, I'd wonder,
Did any of it really happen? It all seems like an illusion, a jumble of images and sound bites that don't quite add up to something whole. Was I really here for eighteen months? Is that possible?
In some ways I felt so disconnected from the whole experience that I legitimately worried about whether the movies would ever be presented to a mass audience. Maybe they'd go straight to video. Maybe they'd sit in a can in Peter's basement. That sounds crazy, I know, but it didn't seem out of the realm of possibility. After all, nothing like this had ever been done—nothing like this had ever been
attempted
. What if the movies disappeared and nobody ever had a chance to see what we did? Or what if the movies were released and still no one
got it
, because even if each of the movies was ten hours long, there still would be a thousand brilliant little moments left on the cutting-room floor?

I knew that when I boarded a plane and looked down at New Zealand fading into the blue Pacific, I wanted to be able to say, “It happened, and here's my own little memorial to it.” So it wasn't like I was coerced into getting a tattoo; no one twisted my arm. I went along willingly because I came to believe it was a worthy thing to do, and I don't regret it in the least.

Once we committed to the idea of getting tattoos, the next step was to come up with an interesting design, something cool and interesting and emblematic of our collective experience. It had to be small, too, something that wouldn't call unnecessary attention to itself. We were actors, after all, not bikers, and this act was merely a brief walk on the wild side. Furthermore, we had agreed ahead of time that a small tattoo would work best because it could be hidden. This wasn't supposed to be a publicity stunt, and we didn't want it to devolve into that. This was about honoring each other and the work we had done, as well as solidifying, in some way, our commitment to remain friends and brothers for life. To that end, we settled on a tattoo that depicts the elvish symbol for the number nine, the number of members of the Fellowship. Deepening the impact of the tattoo is that it was based on a drawing created by Alan Lee specifically for this occasion. In other words, it's an Alan Lee original, and it was a very nice thing for him to do. Alan is a gracious man who was always doing things like that. Before we left New Zealand, Elijah and I wanted to present something to the crew, so we asked Alan to sketch an image of Frodo and Sam turning and waving good-bye. He kindly agreed, of course, and even added Gollum—peering out between our legs. We transferred the image to a card and made hundreds of copies that we signed and distributed as parting gifts.

We arrived at Roger's Tattoo Art on the morning of December 17, 2000. I'd walked by the shop a hundred times before but had never given any thought to opening the door, had in fact barely noticed the place even existed. But now, here I was, surrounded by the Fellowship (as well as Christine and Alexandra), waiting for my turn at the needle. It was almost hard to believe. For Viggo and Orlando, who already had tattoos, I'm sure this was nothing more than a joyous event, a noble salute to friendship and camaraderie. To me it was all of that, as well as a frightening leap into the great unknown. I think the other neophytes—the tattoo virgins—probably felt as I did, although we all did our best to put up a sturdy facade, including the one person I was most shocked to see: Ian McKellen.

I could only imagine what they would think back in England, if they could see Ian now, this giant of the British stage, hanging out at a tattoo parlor. Not that Ian was opposed to getting in touch with his funky side. Ian is an exceptionally hip guy who exists on the cutting edge of culture. He's always finding interesting places to go, and hanging out with the most fascinating people. He's just a very cool guy, the kind of guy I wanted to be when I lived in New York for three months when I was twenty years old and didn't have kids. Ian was sixty, but vigorously protective of his attachment to youth and youth culture. And I'm sure he experienced less trepidation than I did about patronizing Roger's Tattoo Art.

Two major decisions had to be made before the fun could begin: which part of the body to decorate, and who would go first. Each of us made his own decision about where to have the tattoo applied. Billy suggested the ankle, which I thought was perfect, since we hobbits had spent thousands of hours having our feet attended to. Hobbit feet, of course, have long been the subject of conjecture and speculation and armchair psychoanalysis. They're big and hairy and goofy, and Tolkien devotes considerable effort to their description. One of the reasons Tolkien really connected with the people who dominated the counterculture of the 1960s was his apparent agreement with hippie philosophy: not just the environmental treatise and not just his messages of peace and brotherhood, but also the smoking of the pipe weed, and the elves and the barefoot hobbits. There's something about the sacredness of feet that people in the hippie world would understand and appreciate. Tolkien couldn't have known that, of course, since he wrote
The Lord of the Rings
many years earlier. Nevertheless, he knew that by making the feet bigger, he was drawing attention to them. Whether he was making a sexual joke (big feet, big dick), I don't know, although there was certainly no shortage of those during filming, for anyone who chose to reach for that interpretation. Anyway, Billy liked the idea of honoring the hobbit feet by having his ankle tattooed, and I agreed with him, so we became the two members of the Fellowship to have tattoos etched on our ankles.

Billy went first, and while it was obviously not a pleasant experience for him, he had a sense of humor about it. I held his leg down, as Roger Ingerton, the proprietor and tattoo artist, pulled up a chair and went to work. For the next seven or eight minutes, with the needle whining and whirring, Billy grimaced and moaned. Every so often, he shouted, “Oh, man, it hurts!” while the rest of us laughed nervously. Then he jumped off the table, winced dramatically, and gave me a pat on the back.

“Your turn, Sean.”

And so it was. I was scared, but also emboldened by adrenaline. As hard as the previous year and a half had been, at that moment, in that setting, all I could think was,
Look how much fun we're having
. So I lay down on the table and presented my ankle to Roger, who wasted no time in getting started. I'd always wondered how it would feel to get a tattoo, and now I knew.

Aaaaaarrrrggghh!

I was shocked by how much it hurt, how quickly the pain shot through my skin and into my anklebone. You see people getting tattoos in the movies, and it never seems to be a big deal. They kind of sit there and laugh or chat casually as the artist dabs ink onto a meaty biceps. Well, maybe that's the way it works when they have some flesh with which to work, but on the ankle? Uh-uh. In a way, this was even worse than when I'd gored my foot. That had been an accident, and the initial pain had subsided quickly. This was self-induced agony, and it wasn't going to end anytime soon.

“Oh, God!” I whined, although I tried to smile as I said it. When Alexandra, clearly frightened, crawled under the table, I realized it might have been a slight miscalculation on my part to bring her along. Just what she needed: a lingering image of her father being tortured like Dustin Hoffman in
Marathon Man.

I want you to think very carefully, Sean, and tell me, is it safe?

“Do you want to come under here with me, Daddy?”

“No, Ali, I'm okay.” I smiled at her, then turned away and clenched my teeth. The other guys were supportive, although they did laugh even as they offered encouragement. Such was the gallows atmosphere that surrounded the event. Toward the end of the procedure, Roger began scraping with the needle, in an effort to spread the ink evenly and deeply. That was the worst part, like having periodontal work without the novocaine. The fact that some people, like Roger, who looked like Ray Bradbury's Illustrated Man, regularly and willingly give themselves over to this kind of pain seemed patently absurd to me. When the needle finally stopped and Roger said, “Done,” I breathed a sigh of relief and rolled off the table, as weak in the knees as a seasick tourist returning from a whale watch. Within seconds, though, the pain was gone, replaced by a flush of pride and excitement.

I'd done it! I'd gotten my first tattoo!

Next up was Ian, who chose to have his shoulder tattooed. I held his right arm while Roger snapped on a fresh latex glove and went to work. As we tried to ritualize the experience by simultaneously teasing and comforting each other, the tattoo shop took on the feel of a pirate ship—
Arrh, maties!
—and at the center of it all was Roger, a massively tattooed fifty-something Kiwi with a voice like sandpaper and a fiercely individualistic outlook on the world. Or so he wanted us to believe.

“You know what I am?” Roger growled at one point. “I'm a bloody anarchist!”

“Really?” I said. “How long did you say this shop has been here?”

“About thirty-five years, give or take.”

“Oh, no offense, Roger, but after thirty-five years, you're pretty much part of the establishment, aren't you?”

Roger pulled the needle away from Ian's shoulder, cocked his head in my direction, and smiled.

“Well, I'm sort of on the fringe. Know what I mean?”

That was the highlight of the day: the self-proclaimed anarchist tattooing the gay, knighted legend of stage and screen. I just loved that moment. But it was all fun. We stayed for the better part of two hours, until each of us had been stamped. Orlando was tattooed on the right forearm, Viggo and Dom on the shoulder, Elijah on the lower part of his belly, near the hipbone, and Brett on the small of his back.

Afterward, when I proudly showed my tattoo to Peter Jackson, I was surprised and moved by his reaction.

“Wow, that's great,” he said, and I could tell by the look in his eyes that he meant it. I would think it pleased Peter to know that our experience had been so profound, and that he had been the man chiefly responsible for that experience. He had inspired us and instilled within us a commitment that was unprecedented and permanent. Not until a year later, however, after the release of the first film, did I realize just how much Peter liked the idea of the Fellowship tattoo. That's when he and producer Mark Ordesky got tattoos of their own: the number 10.

*   *   *

We took a vow to keep the bond private and spiritual in nature. Granted, there was no way to prevent the media from revealing that we had gotten tattoos—I think the news had leaked by the time we left Roger's studio—but at least we could maintain a purity of purpose, and prevent hundreds of thousands of
The Lord of the Rings
fans from tattooing themselves with the elvish symbol for 9, by declining to reveal the image in public. We all agreed to that. No going on Leno or Letterman and flashing the tattoo for a national audience. That would cheapen the experience, tarnish the memory.

Ah, the best laid plans … The Fellowship tattoo became big news in the entertainment world; everywhere we went, people asked to see it. At first we refused, but we've all cracked at some point. My moment of shame—admittedly, the most egregious and knuckleheaded offense committed by any of us—came with Steve Kmetko of the E! network, during a broadcast of
E! News Live
.

“Hey, you know Ian McKellen showed us his tattoo the other day,” Steve said. “We want to see yours, too.”

“Really? Ian?”

“He sure did.”

“I don't know, Steve. I mean, we made a pact.”

“Well, I guess someone forgot to tell Ian, because we saw his tattoo.”

Hell, if Ian is going to show his tattoo, I guess I can, too.

With that I rolled up my pants leg and the camera zoomed in and got a nice close-up of my tattoo, which immediately made its way to the Internet, effectively killing the secret we had promised to take to our graves. But at least I wasn't the only person—or even the first person—to have broken the vow.

Or so I thought.

As I walked off the set, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that I'd been duped, that Steve had tricked me in order to be the first person to broadcast an image of the Fellowship tattoo. So I pulled out my cell phone and placed a call to Ian. I asked him if he had also succumbed to the urges of the wily journalist Steve Kmetko and displayed his tattoo on television.