John Rhys-Davies is one of those stars who specialize in excellent supporting roles. He was, among others, Sallah in “Indiana Jones”, Rodrigues in the series “Shogun” and Gimli in the trilogy “”. However, he remembers this last role with – literally – pain. The actor paid for working in full dwarven make-up with a terrible allergy.
John Rhys-Davies suffered on the set of ‘The Lord of the Rings’
Of the entire Fellowship of the Ring, only John Rhys-Davies spent long hours in the make-up trailer every day. He was the only one who needed full make-up, which included a fake face – filled cheeks, to which a long dwarven beard was glued, an enlarged nose, bushy eyebrows. In a few scenes, his Gimli appeared without a helmet, which also meant a full wig. Unfortunately for the actor, it turned out on the first day that the make-up elements applied to him were causing him dramatic allergies.
His face was swelling from the very first moments, which forced the crew to shorten the shots with John Rhys-Davis to the bare minimum. The actor was actually replaced in most scenes by a stunt double – Brett Beattie. The close-ups were indeed shot with Rhys-Davis, but the vast majority of the rest (over 2,300 hours of work on the set) was the work of a stunt double, who became more attached to the crew than the actor hired for the role. At one point in the production, the idea even arose to include not only John Rhys-Davis on the payroll for the role of Gimli, but also the second – physical – performer of the role, Brett Beattie. Rhys-Davis protested:
I don’t tend to share the credit, he claimed, adding that it was he who breathed life into the dwarf with his voice.
The actor’s painful allergy also forced a complete reorganization of work on the set. John Rhys-Davies “dropped out” of most shooting days, in which scenes of the entire Fellowship of the Ring were filmed after leaving Rivendell or the three greats – Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli – together. Rhys-Davies recorded his scenes alone. Sometimes he was accompanied only by Viggo Mortensen, who read Aragorn’s lines off-screen. No wonder that after finishing work on the trilogy, the commemorative Fellowship of the Ring tattoo was made not by John Rhys-Davies, but by his stunt double.
After a few years, the actor was offered the opportunity to play the dwarf again – this time while working on the film trilogy “The Hobbit”. John Rhys-Davies painfully refused:
There’s a part of me that would love to. But I don’t know if my face can take the punishment again, he said in a 2009 interview with Empire.
Source: Gazeta
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