The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed simultaneously. 1)
The Shire, the Hobbits' charming village, was created a year before shooting began - the director wanted the place to look authentic, so he instructed the gardeners to plant a variety of vegetation in advance. 2)
Sir Christopher Lee, or the film's Saruman, was the only cast member who knew Tolkien personally. As a loyal fan of the trilogy, who reportedly read The Lord of the Rings every year until his death, he often gave advice to the makeup artists and the director himself. 3)
The scene where the wizard Gandalf hits his head on a beam from the ceiling in Bilbo Baggins' house in The Fellowship of the Ring was not planned, but Sir Ian McKellen's reaction so delighted the director that he decided to include it in the film. 4)
Sean Bean playing Boromir was afraid of flying in a helicopter. During the filming of scenes on mountain tops, the actor climbed them every day for two hours in full gear. 5)
The Return of the King is the first and still only fantasy film to win an Oscar statuette for Best Picture. 6)
In the scene where Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas search a mound of burned orc corpses for Merry and Pippin, Viggo Mortensen kicked a lying helmet so hard that it broke two toes. His scream was completely genuine. 7)
Viggo Mortensen became so engrossed in his character that in between takes he traveled the film locations in full gear to make the filmed Aragorn look travel-weary. 8)
The war cries of the orcs besieging Helm's Yar were recorded with 25,000 cricket fans in attendance. 9)
The trees of the forest of Lothlórien were made entirely of rubber. 10)
The composer of the tune that Pippin sings to Denethor in Return of the King was the actor himself, Billy Boyd. The author of the words, Tolkien. 11)
The director of the trilogy, Peter Jackson, suffers from arachnophobia. He modeled the image of Shelob after the species of spider he feared the most. 12)
The tallest actor to play in Lord of the Rings was John Rhys-Davies, playing the dwarf Gimli. 13)
The girl running towards Sam and throwing herself around his neck in the last scene of Return of the King is actually the actor's daughter. 14)
All of the members of the Fellowship of the Ring, with the exception of the actor playing Gimli, tattooed themselves with the elven symbol of the number 9 after the shoot. 15)
The forge in Isengard was not created for the film. It was an authentic forge where weapons were forged for production. 16)