New Elijah interview 7/26 Elijah Wood inteview: Metro New York Edition Monday, July 26, 2004 Leaving The Shire Elijah Wood speaks about his career before, during and after LOTR Actor Elijah Wood, who gained fame from the movie trilogy, LOTR, has catapulted to the A-list of Hollywood stars. But he hasn't concerned himself with stardom lately. He's been busy filming "Everything Is Illuminated," an adaptation of the novel by Jonathan Safran[sic..mary], in Prague.
METRO: You started your career in Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" video. That's not a typical Hollywood beginning.
ELIJAH WOOD: The interesting thing is the video was directed by David Fincher, who was an unknown at the time, but later he made great like, "Seven" and "Fight Club." I was very excited to find out after all these years, that my acting debut was in conjunction with such a great director as David.
METRO: And what about acting in more videos?
ELIJAH WOOD: Yes! I would love to be in the video of my favorite band, Radiohead.
METRO: You spend three years making LOTR. Was it difficult to adjust to a regular movie-making pace?
ELIJAH WOOD: It's very easy. The experience with LOTR was rapturous. Now I practically jump from one movie to another. For example, my last movie, which was filmed in London two months ago, had only 27 shooting days. But my character only had to be on the set for one week. It was five minutes in makeup; no four hours spending putting on hairy Hobbits' feet. It was so easy.
METRO: So what's the new movie about?
ELIJAH WOOD: It's the story of a boy who decided to move to Ukraine to find the woman who saved his father's life. It's a very beautiful, dramatic but also very funny story.
METRO: You drive a German-made car, the Trabant, in the film.
ELIJAH WOOD: That's right! That is an unbelievable car! I completely fell in love with it and I spend most of my shooting time inside it.