By DAVE MENDONCA Special to the Daily Press
Santa Monica’s own, Sean Astin is like any other person. He eats at Subway. He likes to spend time with his family, and he enjoys fighting the forces of evil in blockbuster fantasy movies. Ever since he made his feature film acting debut in the Steven Spielberg-produced cult hit, “The Goonies,” his career has seen many highs including his role as Elijah Woods’ loyal friend, “Samwise Gamgee” in the enormously popular “Lord Of The Rings” movies. Today, this married father of three daughters is not battling orcs anymore, but he is doing something just as exhausting — keeping up with his kids. Recently, he took time to discuss his family, his thoughts about movie directing and the negatives associated with his most famous role.
Q: You’ve been blessed with many talents, but what is the hardest thing for you to do — acting, directing or taking care of your three daughters?
A: “I guess because I take care of my three daughters with my wife, who really takes care of my three daughters, everyday that doesn’t seem as hard even though it probably is the most important. Of course, the oldest one is just coming into the teenage years, so I might have to revise that. I would say of the three that you mentioned — directing. I always think of directing and producing as interlinked. In order to have the kind of creative impact on the movie that you want to have, you kind of have to have a producorial role. I would say that (directing) is the thing I’ve had the hardest time figuring out how to raise money for and how to be able to do on the kind of scope that I’ve wanted to do it.”
Q: How has your life changed since your daughters arrived?
A: “Well, you know I don’t do much else really. We live in a suburb which is a good, in no traffic, 35 minutes away from the heart of the action in L.A. We’re always at home, and everything we do is with them. I was thinking to myself just a day or two ago, ‘Wow, I used to have all these friends I used to do stuff with and I used to go places.’ It sounds horrible, but I don’t think I would change it for anything. How has it changed? It has changed one trillion percent. We now live for our kids.”
Q: Back when your career was a main focus in your life, what roles did you audition for and really wanted, but didn’t get?
A: “When I auditioned for them, I would have liked to have gotten them, but when I’ve seen them afterwards, by and large, I think the people who did them, did them in a qualitatively better way, you know, either more interesting or who they were was better suited like River Phoenix in “Stand By Me.” I auditioned for the role. My audition was terrible and his was incredible. When I saw the movie, I thought to myself, I could not do that. I could not do what he has done. It was coming out of his life. You can just feel it on the screen. There was something so powerful about what he was doing that I didn’t have that to draw on in my life, so I don’t think there was any way I could have done that even if I had done the part.”
5C6,Q: One big role you did land was that of “Samwise Gamgee” in “The Lord of The Rings” movies. What were the best and worst parts about working on those films?
A: “I always thought that I was ready for anything, I was absolutely not ready for the odyssey, the journey of being a part of that kind of experience. It was just overwhelming and that was the best thing, working with people who are at the top of their field and being a part of telling a story that is such a magical, important story in literary history over the last 100 years. Just the whole panoply of sights and sounds and emotions and everything that we experienced was the ups. The worst part, frankly for me, was having to be so heavy. I remember looking in the mirror and just thinking, ‘Who is that fat **** looking back at me? I don’t recognize him.’ It was fine for the first three or four months and might have even been fine for the seventh or eighth month, but once you got into a year and then you’re into almost a year and a half, you start to forget who you are. You don’t like the identity. As soon as we were finished (the movies), I went and dropped 35 or 40 pounds in seven weeks. I just went on a 1,500 or 2,000 calorie a day diet. I was running an hour and a half every day. I remember as the weight was peeling off I’m like, ‘That’s me! That’s who I want to be!’”
Dave Mendonca is an entertainment writer based in Toronto, Canada. You can send him your feedback at
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 16, 2008. Read the original PDF.