Colleen writes: Sean Astin was on the Fox News Channel today. He laughed when his family was refered to as “hollywood royalty” and thought that only applied to people Princess Grace and her ilk.

He spoke of his spat with Andy Serkis, resulting from an accident on the set. He says the “fight” was really just rumor blown out of proportion. In one scene, Serkis was supposed to grab his hood and ripped off Sean’s wig instead. Sean said he was in a bad mood that day and walked off in a huff, but realized it was just an accident and all was smoothed over.

He also explained to one viewer how the hobbits were made to look small on screen adn how they used actor doubles as well as blue screens and other tricks.

He gave a solid, technical explanation to another viewer who was having trouble getting good quality sound on his dvd. Sean mentioned that different video systems have different abilities, and if the man in the audience was having trouble hearing the voices over the soundtrack, it wasn’t the film, it was his dvd player.

He also spoke of how he would like to run for public office someday and told a story about how, when he was a little boy, he would run down the hall shouting, “I’m running for mayor!” He believes in the ancient Greek Polis, the idea that the citizen must return service to the state.