Elijah Wood Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions

Hi I'm Elijah Wood and I'm doing

the Wired Autocomplete Interview.

[upbeat music]

[laughing]

Why is Elijah Wood hot?

What?

I didn't know that I was and I

don't know how to answer that question.

But thanks.

My parents?

Have

Daniel Radcliffe and Elijah Wood met?

Yes.

When we were doing ADR for one of

The Lord of the Rings films and they were shooting

Prisoner of Azkaban, the third Harry Potter film

and we got to go visit the set.

I met him then but I don't know that I've met him since.

But I certainly get asked if I am him a lot.

Which I find really amusing and it

doesn't bother me at all, seriously.

Does Elijah Wood play Spiderman?

[laughing]

In the movie?

No.

I mean I've played the video game.

It's good.

How did they make Elijah Wood small?

In Lord of the Rings I'm assuming.

It was a variety of different things.

So there'd be an entire sequence that would be shot

without us and then we would, with a motion control camera

more often than not, we would then go onto

a blue screen unit and sort of fit ourselves

into that same shot, we'd be comped in.

That was one way, we also had scale doubles,

people who were about the height of hobbits

that would wear our outfits and also

masks of our face which was pretty disturbing.

They were incredible and they did

a lot of our work for a lot of the wide stuff.

Occasionally there was forced perspective that was used

so a good example of that would be Frodo and Gandalf

on the cart in Bag End in the first film.

Frodo jumps into the cart and they're sitting side by side.

I was actually sitting slightly behind Ian McKellen,

Ian McKellen was sat slightly ahead of us

and the camera was placed in such a way that it looked like

we were sitting side by side with him taller than I.

You look at the monitor and we were siting

next to each other and he was giant

and I was small which was pretty magical.

It's a super old fashioned trick that totally works now.

And then there was like one sequence

that we ended up abandoning this technology

but they made these sort of big people

on stilts but in large human outfits

with articulated fake hands and arms

and we only used it once.

It proved to be effective in the background

if you see when they're trying to check into

the Prancing Pony under the name Underhill,

you see a few people walk by, these are these

people on stilts in giant outfits essentially

and they ended up abandoning that,

they didn't use it as much 'cos it wasn't super practical.

Anyway, it as a long answer.

Multiple tools in that particular toolbox.

Did

Ian McKellen and Elijah Wood film scenes together?

Yes we shot all of our scenes together.

So anytime that the hobbits were with anyone

that were larger than them, we would always be together

it's just occasionally we'd not be able

to look each other in the eye like you would normally look.

Sometimes we'd be on our knees to look small and we

could interact but we were always in scenes together.

It's just in terms of how we would be placed

in front of the camera to appear small or large.

What was Elijah Wood's first movie?

It was a tiny, tiny role in Back to the Future Two.

There is a scene in the Cafe 80s

and there are two kids at the back of the Cafe 80s

trying to play this gunslinger game with a light gun,

Michael J. Fox comes up and explains it to them

and then shoots a bunch of things

and does really well at the game and the kids

make fun of him 'cos they're like,

wait you have to use your hands?

Anyway that was the first thing I ever did.

What does Elijah Wood look like now?

What nationality is Elijah Wood?

Boring American.

I mean there's heritage that goes

way back but my nationality is U.S.

There's like a little bit of Danish in me,

little bit of English but that goes way back.

What does Elijah Wood eat?

[laughing]

That's a difficult question to answer

I could say a lot of different things.

Pizza's probably my favorite food.

My girlfriend and I, we eat a fair amount of pizza,

it's obsessive.

I also really love frozen pizza.

It's a little bit of a thing.

I go into new supermarkets, that you've never been to,

and seeing new brands of frozen pizza that you've never

seen before, you're like [bleep] I gotta give that a go.

There are certain frozen pizza brands

that I won't [bleep] with but

man I love a good frozen pizza.

What did Elijah Wood keep from Rings.

I have the One Ring,

I have a pair of latex hobbit feet, they're in good shape,

Sting, the sword,

I have a slate from the films as well.

Can Elijah Wood sing?

Err.

I'm not tone deaf

but I don't think I can sing very well.

I'm always pretty shy to sing karaoke

and need a little lubrication in order

to get the confidence to do it.

I dunno, I've been told I can sing,

I don't have a great deal of confidence in it.

I did actually audition for Moulin Rouge

so I took singing lessons for that

and the audition consisted of me singing two songs.

If there's a video tape of that,

that's gotta be pretty embarrassing.

Oh man.

Elijah Wood can and may.

That's cool.

That's actually a really old reference if that's what it is.

The first large role that I had in a film

was a movie called Avalon, I was eight years old.

There's a whole sequence where the character that I played

can't distinguish the difference between can and may

and he ends up going to the Principal's office

because of it or gets sent out of class

'cos he just can't understand the difference.

So I can and I may.

Maybe I can?

Can Elijah Wood play the piano?

I took lessons when I was young

like a lot of kids do.

Instead of reading the music, I'd play from memory

which is cool you know, a good thing sort of

but is a really bad habit 'cos I wouldn't

necessarily remember everything correctly.

I think I was like 13 or 14 and I quit

and then I ended up having to have a crash course

in playing piano for a movie called Grand Piano

because the character that I played

was an incredibly pianist.

I could play a little bit but not to anywhere that degree.

I didn't walk out of that knowing how to play

any better necessarily but I got really good

at fitting my hands in the right place at the right time.

It was fun, it was really scary.

Can Elijah Wood drive a stick shift?

I mean I've done it twice for work

but they were crash courses

like you've gotta do this now for this scene.

I mean the last time I did it, I almost went out of gear

and then very intensely put my foot on the accelerator

and I managed to successfully not hit anything and stop.

I need to take lessons 'cos there's some really great cars

that only drive stick and I can't drive them.

Does Elijah Wood

have a personal life?

Well of course I do.

I mean I'm a record collector,

I DJ from time to time,

watching movies, my girlfriend and I

we had all of these movies that we'd never seen

in this sort of collective shame list,

pretty significant films like I'd never seen a Kurosawa film

so we thought let's put together a film festival for us

to catch up on these movies and we'll invite friends.

We did that and it was really fun.

Does Elijah Wood age?

Yeah I do.

I get asked this question a lot.

I definitely age, I have gray hair

maybe not as many wrinkles as one would have at 39,

I don't know, it's all relative.

Does Elijah Wood

do magic tricks?

I used to, when I was kid I learned a couple of card tricks

that were relatively fun and

somewhat easy but I've since forgotten them.

So no I don't do any magic tricks.

Does Elijah Wood

have dichromatic eyes?

No, no they're both blue, both the same shade of blue.

I think.

Does Elijah Wood

wear wigs.

In life no, for work occasionally.

Okay is Elijah Wood

a twin?

No.

Not that I know of.

Maybe there's like an unknown twin

or a doppelganger out there.

Is Elijah Wood a DJ.

Yeah I started sort of casually doing it

way back in the Lord of the Rings days

and then officially sort of jumped into

records about I guess 10 years ago maybe a little bit less.

The thing about vinyl that's so exciting is that

it is a physical object so things can go wrong and you

have to be at the ready to fix that problem sonically

and so you're always on your toes,

there's nothing lazy about it, it's very active

and I just love that, it's really fun.

Is Elijah Wood vegan?

[bleep] no man.

I'm so sorry.

Don't mean to be offensive to any vegans.

I love food too much.

But yeah veganism is intense.

I mean you can't eat honey for instance.

Honey's delicious.

Is Elijah Wood left handed?

No I'm not left handed, I'm right handed.

Which is a good thing because I did fall on this particular

hand and it was out of commission for about three months.

So that would've been a bummer if I was left handed.

Is Elijah Wood

related to Evan Rachel Wood?

I don't think we are related but we

could be related as far back to England.

My heritage goes back to England and Ireland and there's

a good chance that hers could go back there as well

in which case, distantly, we could be.

You never know.

Elijah Wood is stealing your socks.

Is that really something that someone wrote on Google?

God how do they know?

I thought I was so discreet Jesus.

Is this the last board?

Not the last board.

Where is Elijah Wood today?

Like right now?

I'm doing this so I'm here today

but when you watch this, I won't be here,

I'll be somewhere else.

I can't answer that question

for you contextually, based on where

you are watching this now, I could be anywhere.

I don't know.

Oh man.

Where did Elijah Wood grow up?

I grew up in California.

I was born in Iowa and moved

to Los Angeles when I was seven.

I've lived here ever since.

Where did Elijah Wood go to college?

I didn't go to college.

My university time was taken up in Middle Earth.

[laughing]

it was four years of my life

was taken up making those films.

I also don't know that I would've gone to university

'cos I didn't graduate high school.

Didn't even get the GED, which I often did think

to do like maybe I should just do this

so I can graduate and I didn't do it.

That is not a good idea though, like graduate high school.

Don't follow in my footsteps, graduate please.

Where does Elijah Wood live?

I live in southern California

and occasionally I live in Austin Texas.

Okay.

Who does Elijah Wood look like?

Apparently a lot like Daniel Radcliffe

and occasionally like Tobey Maguire.

Who are Elijah Wood's parents?

My mom's name is Deborah

and my dad's name is Warren.

That's them.

Who is Elijah Wood

in Sin City?

I play Kevin in Sin City

who is a mute, very religiously fanatical,

in the kind of questionable way, cannibal.

Who is Elijah Wood married to?

I'm not married yet.

One day.

Who did Elijah Wood

voice in God of War?

I'd completely forgotten I did a voice for that.

Apparently Kratos' brother Deimos

and I remember I was killed and I get my head ripped off.

I had to scream

that was, yeah, I vaguely remember that,

that was so long ago.

That's it.