Sir Ian McKellen with his stunt and scale doubles on the set of “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”
Doesn’t Ian McKellan just seem like the coolest guy? He’s appeared in so many memorable roles, but he says that many of his greatest on camera memories come from filming the Lord of the Rings trilogy in New Zealand. He told Indiewire:
It may be my impression but I don’t remember a green screen on The Lord of the Rings. If Gandalf was on top of a mountain, I’d be there on the mountain. The technology was being invented while we were making the film. [In ‘The Lord of the Rings’] I wasn’t involved in any of that, I was away acting on a mountain. I tend not to remember the bad times, but I don’t think there were any. I think I enjoyed every single moment of making those films.
Yoda’s creator based the character’s design off of his own face
In order to create Yoda, makeup artist Stuart Freeborn looked inward and found a look that he thought would work well on the swamp planet of Dagobah. Freeborn’s work can be seen throughout the early films of Stanley Kubrick and even in Superman, but he’s most remembered for his Star Wars designs. In fact, it was his work creating the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey that won him the job on Star Wars where he went on to design hairy space pirate Chewbacca. However, when it came to creating Yoda he moved away from giant hairy animals and made something a little closer to what he saw in the mirror. The mirror image is strong with this one.
Not Apocalypse Now, but was modelled on Heart of Darkness, the same book that film was based on. I don’t remember the details, but I do recall it being one of those odd films that only got made because Pitt agreed to be in it, and he only agreed to do that in turn for the Studio greenlighting a different film he wanted to make (dont remember which one though).