Obviously I always wanted to do a contemporary piece.

You don’t improvise with a Cameron Crowe script.

When I saw the first I couldn’t believe I was in another great movie that would be made into a trilogy. This movie is quite visible and I think it will stand the test of time. I think kids and parents will love this movie for a long time.

Until this movie I have played a boxer, a cowboy, a knight, a prince, an elf and a pirate. I am so glad to have done all of that already, and am ready for this phase of my career.

I came back out here from England and I was there for a while and it was beautiful and it is just great to see London going from Spring to Summer and Autumn.

I remember one time that I was filming a scene in whych my character rides through Troy on a chariot. I just looked around at this incredible set thinking ‘This is the life’.

When you start falling for somebody and you can’t stop thinking about when you’re going to see them again, I love that. Women are beautiful. They deserve to be cherished and respected.

There’s a difference between a failure and a fiasco… a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions.

Failure is simply the non-presence of success. But a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions.

My whole career has been fulfilling my childhood fantasies, playing characters that are larger than life, getting to play a knight, an elf, a prince, and a soldier.

Elves are cool, man.

I’m still at the beginning of my career. It’s all a little new, and I’m still learning as I go.

I missed my home – like the physicality of my home, I missed my friends and my family mostly and just hanging out and being in your home country – culturally it feels right and that is what I miss.

Elves are like trees, grounded and focused from the trunk down but graceful and agile on top.

Movies like that aren’t about the visual effects and explosions. They’re human stories about family, about life, about death.

When everyone around you is doing all this incredible pirate acting and you’re having to sort of play the straight guy and move the story forward, you kind of want to be doing some of that pirate ripping it up stuff, but in truth, to be a part of that project is what I love.

Elves have this superhuman strength, yet they’re so graceful. Tolkien created them to be angelic spirits, but I also saw Legolas as something out of the Seven Samurai.

I don’t do a film unless it has a sword in it. And if it doesn’t have a sword in it, I insist that they have one in the same room to keep me comfortable.

I crave working on those small independent movies because I love going to see those myself.

I wondered how they would top the Pirates and skeletons and moonlight, because that’s a pretty cool concept.

Yeah, I mean the material, directors, the other cast, and if you think you can do something with the character then you do it and go from there. I am looking forward to doing some smaller movies.

I am a hopeless romantic and I love to spoil my girlfriends.

The process of making a movie is what I love. I thrive on that. It’s an exciting miracle, a mad adventure. I love being part of it.

Maybe our generation is more about sex, but it feels like romance is dying out.

I’m quite sensitive to women. I saw how my sister got treated by boyfriends. I read this thing that said when you are in a relationship with a woman, imagine how you would feel if you were her father. That’s been my approach, for the most part.

I’ve done movies with a sword before. But I haven’t really been given the full responsibility of something like a Ridley Scott film.

I have played a boxer, a cowboy, a knight, a prince, an elf and a pirate. I am so glad to have done all of that already.

I had the training at drama school where I studied Shakespeare and Brecht and Chekov and all these period historical playwrights and I think that I responded to the material.

How can you be in hell while you are in my heart?

I got to work with one of my heroes, Johnny Depp, and to see how he goes about business, which was really inspiring for me at this stage in my career.

I had studied theater for three years in London when someone suggested me for the role.

I try to take the time to appreciate and I certainly do appreciate and I do feel proud but that is probably one of the things I need to work on, building a bit of time for myself.

People come into your life and people leave it… you just have to trust that life has a road mapped out for you.

I think it’s sort of a rite of passage for a British actor to try and get the American accent and have a good crack at doing that.

Whatever happens in life is fine – just trust in that.

I’m so happy to have been a part of that process and I would go straight back into the desert in a ton of chain mail for Ridley any day of the week. He’s an amazing director and I can’t wait to see the long version.

Lord of the Rings was my first experience making movies and at the time, I had no ideas how movies were done. I thought that’s the way they’re done, so in a way, I had nothing to compare it to.

Although it is a fantasy film, it’s as real as it can be. You have to imagine that an audience will buy their ticket to a cinema and get on a first-class flight and journey to Middle Earth.

I did send a girl a plane ticket asking her for a visit, I guess that’s quite romantic.

The truth is – I found myself doing these huge action-adventure movies, and um, and which are cool man. And I really love doing them. And thankfully I haven’t had too much dialogue, because if I had I would have really made a mess of it. You know what I mean?

A friend told me that teenage girls are always looking for someone to pin their dreams on. That doesn’t make it any less weird though.

If life isn’t about human beings and living in harmony, then I don’t know what it’s about.

I feel really privileged to be an actor, to be paid to do something I love.

The role of an actor is to make every character believable.

I know you can be up one minute and drop the next, so I’m trying to maintain a steady course so I can have some longevity.

Vig used to call me ‘Elf boy’, and I’d call him ‘filthy human’. As an Elf, I never got a scratch on me, never got dirty. And Vig would come out with blood and sweat all over him. And he’d say to me, ‘Oh, go manicure your nails.’

I’m always amazed at anyone’s interest in what I have to say.

A big part of what I wanted to do with this character was go from when I was a boy and try and develop into a man, really try and play him as a man who is on this search, on a journey of personal, spiritual, political, social discovery.

Someone tried to save my soul in a gas station.

Obviously I always wanted to do a contemporary piece.

I got to dress up in funny clothes and run around New Zealand with a bow and arrow for 18 months, how bad could that be?

I’m trying to mix the cool, independent stuff with the big stuff, but it’s been difficult finding the right roles. It’s been an interesting ride as far as my career pendulum is concerned.

I’m amazed that things have panned out the way they have. I always say I’m so lucky, though my mum always says, “You make your own luck.”

When I was nine, I had this girlfriend and we used to have running races in the park. I wanted to be like Superman and fly in and rescue her.

I think a film set is a quite controlled environment and you feel like you can trust them and it is going to be a safe place to work, but I really don’t think about it.