- Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson CNZM (born October 31, 1961) is a New Zealand filmmaker best known as the director of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, which he, along with Fran Walsh, his long time partner, and Philippa Boyens, adapted from the novels by J. R. R. Tolkien. He is also known for his 2005 remake of "King Kong". Jackson first gained attention with his "splatstick" horror comedies, …
- Orlando Bloom
Orlando Jonathan Blanchard Bloom (born 13 January 1977) is an English actor. He had his break-through role in the early 2000s as the elf-prince Legolas in "The Lord of the Rings" and blacksmith Will Turner in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" trilogy of films, and subsequently established himself as a lead in Hollywood films, including "Troy", "Elizabethtown," and "Kingdom of Heaven".
- J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English philologist, writer and university professor, best known as the author of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings". He was an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon language (Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon) from 1925 to 1945, and Merton Professor of English language and literature from 1945 to 1959. He was a devout Roman Catholic.
- Elijah Wood
Elijah Jordan Wood (born January 28 1981) is an American actor. Acting since the age of nine, Wood is best known for the role of Frodo Baggins in the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy. Making his film debut with a minor part in "Back to the Future Part II" (1989), Wood landed a succession of subsequent larger roles, and became a critically acclaimed child actor. After his role as Frodo in "The Lord of the Rings", …
- Viggo Mortensen
Young Viggo was an artistic kid, always to be seen with a pencil and paper on hand. This would continue back in New York State when, his parents divorcing in 1969, he and his brothers would move with their mother from Argentina back to Watertown.
- Howard Shore
Howard Leslie Shore (born October 18, 1946) is an Oscar, Golden Globe and Grammy Award-winning Canadian composer, best known for composing the scores to "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy and films of David Cronenberg. He is also a prolific composer of concert works, and is currently writing his first opera, The Fly, based on the plot (though not the score) of Cronenberg's 1986 film.
- Liv Tyler
Liv Tyler (born Liv Rundgren, on July 1, 1977 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, New York) is an American actress most famous for her roles of Grace Stamper in "Armageddon" and Arwen in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
- Sean Bean
Seán Mark Bean is an English film and stage actor. Bean has also acted in a number of television productions as well as performing voice work for computer games and television adverts. As an actor, he adopted the Irish/Scottish spelling "Seán" of his first name. Bean is best known for his role as Boromir, in the The Lord of the Rings films and as James Bond adversary Alec Trevelyan in Goldeneye.
- Billy Boyd
Billy Boyd (born 28 August, 1968 in Glasgow) is a Scottish actor and musician most widely known for playing Peregrin Took (Pippin), in the film adaptations of "The Lord of the Rings" and Barrett Bonden in "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World".
- Dominic Monaghan
Dominic Bernard Patrick Luke Monaghan (born December 8, 1976) is an English actor. He has received international attention from the success of playing Merry Brandybuck in Peter Jackson's adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and his role as Charlie Pace on the television show "Lost".
- John Rhys-Davies
Actor John Rhys-Davies joined The Planetary Society's Advisory Council in 2004, but first began working with the Society in 1998 when he appeared on stage at the Pasadena Playhouse in the benefit performance, "An Evening on Mars with Ray Bradbury." Rhys-Davies appeared as the dwarf warrior Gimli in all three films of Peter Jackson 's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy.
- Hugo Weaving
Hugo Wallace Weaving (born 4 April 1960) is an Australian film and stage actor, as well as a voice actor, best known for his roles as Agent Smith in "The Matrix" and Elrond in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy of films, the title character of "V for Vendetta" and the voice of Megatron in "Transformers".
- Alan Lee
Alan Lee (born August 20, 1947) is an English book illustrator and movie conceptual designer. He has illustrated several fantasy books such as the centenary edition of "The Lord of the Rings", "Faeries" (with Brian Froud), Lavondyss by Robert Holdstock (as well as the cover of an early print of this book), "The Mabinogion", "Castles" and "Merlin Dreams".
- Karl Urban
Karl-Heinz Urban is a New Zealand actor. He may be best known for playing Éomer in the second and third installment of Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, the role of Kirill, Jason Bourne's opposite number in "The Bourne Supremacy" and the lead role in the video game adaption of "Doom".
- John Howe
John Howe is a book illustrator, living in Neuchatel, Switzerland. One year after graduating from high school, he studied in a college in Strasbourg, France, then at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs. He is best known for his work based on J. R. R. Tolkien's worlds. Howe and Alan Lee were the lead artists of Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy. Howe also re-illustrated the maps of "The Lord of the Rings", "The Hobbit", …
- Philippa Boyens
Philippa Boyens, MNZM, is an Academy Award winning New Zealand screenwriter who co-wrote the screenplay for Peter Jackson's film series "The Lord of the Rings " with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, for which the trio won an Oscar at the 76th Academy Awards in 2004. Boyens worked with the same collaborators on the screenplay for Jackson's version of "King Kong" (2005).
- Ted Nasmith
Ted Nasmith is a Canadian artist, illustrator and architectural renderer. He is best known as one of the world's most prominent illustrators of J. R. R. Tolkien's works - "The Silmarillion", "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit". Ted Nasmith was born in the mid-1950s in Goderich, Ontario, Canada. As the son of a Royal Canadian Air Force officer, …
- Miranda Otto
Miranda Otto (born December 16, 1967) is an Australian Film Institute-nominated and Logie Award-winning Australian actress. The daughter of actors Barry and Lindsay Otto, she began acting at age nineteen, and has performed in a variety of low-budget and major studio films. Otto's first major film appearance was in 1986's "Emma's War", in which she played a teenager who moves to Australia's bush country during World War II.
- Richard Taylor
Richard Taylor is the creator and head of New Zealand film prop and special effects company Weta Workshop. A close friend of Peter Jackson, he and his company created all of the props, costumes, prosthetics, miniatures and weaponry for Jackson's epic "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy. For his work on the three films, he shared in winning four Academy Awards. This included two for "The Fellowship of the Ring" in Make Up and Visual Effects, …
- Andrew Adamson
Andrew Adamson MNZM (b. December 1, 1966) is a New Zealand film director based mainly in Los Angeles, California, USA, where he made the blockbuster animation films, "Shrek" and "Shrek 2" for which he received an Academy Award nomination. He was director, executive producer, and scriptwriter for C. S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe". Shooting took place in New Zealand, primarily in and around Auckland, …
- Ralph Bakshi
From RalphBakshi.com: "Ralph Bakshi was born in October 1938 in Haifa, Israel. In 1939 his family came to New York escaping the war. He grew up in Brooklyn and went to the High School of... ... You may not know him, but Ralph Bakshi is perhaps well-known for starting the trend that we now called Adult Animation. Born in Israel but raise in New York, Ralph works his way up in the animation industry, working in Terrytoons...
- Jim Rygiel
Jim Rygiel was the visual effects supervisor on “The Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy. Starting his career in 1980, Jim joined Pacific Electric Pictures, one of the earliest companies to employ computer animation for the advertising and film markets. In 1983, Jim's work took him to Digital Productions where he began work on The Last Starfighter (1984), a film notable for its pioneering use of digital imaging in place of models.
- Craig Parker
Craig Parker is a New Zealand actor, now based in the United Kingdom. He is most famous for his role as Haldir of Lórien in "The Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy. He also does voice-overs for New Zealand documentaries and has been entertaining and meeting fans at various Lord of the Rings-related conventions for several years - for example Ring*Con in Germany, which he has attended every year since its creation in 2002.
- R. A. Salvatore
Robert Anthony Salvatore, Massachusetts, who writes under the name R. A. Salvatore, is a fantasy author best known for "The DemonWars Saga", his "Forgotten Realms" novels and the controversial Star Wars: The New Jedi Order novel Vector Prime.
- Lawrence Makoare
Lawrence Makoare is a New Zealand-born Māori actor, probably best-known for his roles in "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy. In "The Fellowship of the Ring", he played the Uruk-hai leader Lurtz, and in "The Return of the King", he played the Witch-king of Angmar as well as Gothmog, the Orc commander at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. He's very popular among "Xena: Warrior Princess"' fans, too, …
- Brian Sibley
Brian Sibley (born July 14, 1949) is an English writer. He is author of over 100 hours of radio drama and has written and presented hundreds of radio documentaries, features and weekly programmes. Born in London, he grew up and was educated in Chislehurst, Kent. In 1981, he co-wrote BBC Radio 4's adaptation of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" with Michael Bakewell, …
- Peter S. Beagle
Peter Soyer Beagle (April 20, 1939) is an American fantasist and author of novels, nonfiction, and screenplays. He is also a talented guitarist and folk singer. He wrote his first novel, "A Fine and Private Place," when he was only 19 years old. Today he is best known as the author of "The Last Unicorn," which routinely polls as one of the top ten fantasy novels of all time, …
- Kevin Wallace
Kevin Wallace is a former member of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group (RUG) and the producer of the stage adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" which debuted in Toronto on February 4, 2006. Wallace's stage credits with RUG include "Whistle Down the Wind" (Aldwych Theatre), "The Beautiful Game" (Cambridge Theatre), and "Celebration", Webber’s 50th Birthday Concert at Royal Albert Hall.
- Cindy Sadowski
- Pauline Baynes
Pauline Baynes (born 1922, in Hove, Sussex) is an English book illustrator, whose work encompasses more than 100 books, notably those by C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Though her early years were spent in India, where her father was commissioner in Agra, she and her elder sister came to England for their schooling. Baynes attended the Slade School of Fine Art, but after a year she volunteered to work for the Ministry of Defence, painting camouflage, …
- Alan Parker
Alan Parker (born in 1944, in Matlock, Derbyshire) is a guitarist and composer best known for his work in the band Blue Mink.Trained by Julian Bream at London's Royal Academy of Music. Was a successful session guitarist in the late 60's also went to play with his own band The Congregation. Much of Parker's session work has gone uncredited but recently he has been named as the electric guitarist on Donovan's Hurdy Gurdy Man.
- Daniel Falconer
Daniel Falcolner is a weapon and armour designer for films and known best for his work with Weta on The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
- Johan de Meij
Johannes Abraham (Johan) de Meij (born November 23, 1953) is a Dutch conductor, trombonist, and composer, best known for his "Symphony No. 1", nicknamed "The Lord of the Rings" symphony.
- Douglas A. Anderson
Douglas Allen Anderson (born 1959) is an author and editor on the subjects of fantasy and medieval literature, specializing in textual analysis of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. His first published book was "The Annotated Hobbit" (1988), which grew out of a study of the revisions made by Tolkien to the various editions of "The Hobbit" following the publication of "The Lord of the Rings".
- Roma Ryan
Roma Shane Ryan (born in Belfast,Northern Ireland) is a writer, poetess, and lyricist, currently living in Artane, north Dublin, Ireland, with her husband Nicky. Ryan is the primary lyricist for the singer Enya, who has stated that the importance of Roma's and Nicky's contributions are such that without them, "Enya" would not exist.
- Andrew Niccol
Andrew M. Niccol (born 1964) is a screenwriter, producer, and director. He wrote and directed "Gattaca", "S1m0ne", and "Lord of War". He also wrote and co-produced "The Truman Show", which earned him an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay in 1999. Niccol was born in Paraparaumu, New Zealand and grew up in Auckland. He left New Zealand at age 21 and began directing commercials in London, England.
- Christian Rivers
Christian Rivers is a Academy Award and BAFTA winning New Zealand visual effects art director and filmmaker. He first met Peter Jackson as a 17 year old and worked with him on storyboarding "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy. He also cameos in "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" as a soldier of Gondor. He is set to make his directorial debut with a remake of "The Dam Busters".
- Harry Sinclair
Harry Alan Sinclair (born 1959 in Auckland, New Zealand) is a filmmaker, actor, and musician. He was a member of the musical/theatrical duo The Front Lawn with Don McGlashan. This collaboration led to the production of three short films "Walkshort", "The Lounge Bar", and "Linda's Body"; the latter featuring the song "Ngaire", which later became a hit for McGlashan's band The Mutton Birds.
- Rayner Unwin
Rayner S. Unwin (1926 - November 23, 2000) was the son of publisher Sir Stanley Unwin of the publishing firm George Allen & Unwin. Young Unwin was a test subject for the firm; his father believed that children were the best judges of what made good children's books. He was paid one shilling for each written report, and in Rayner Unwin's own words, it was "good money in those days". In 1936, at the age of 10, he was asked to review "The Hobbit", …
- Michael Therriault
Michael Therriault (born in Oakville, Ontario) is a Canadian actor. He attended Etobicoke School of the Arts in Toronto, Sheridan College in Oakville, and was a member of the inaugural season of the Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre Training in Stratford, Ontario. After spending seven seasons at the Stratford Festival of Canada, Mr Therriault left the classical repertoire theatre for musical theatre, …