Sean Astin (born February 25, 1971), and recently featured on TORn Tuesday with Quickbeam, is an American film actor, director, and Academy Award-nominated producer best known for his film roles as Mikey Walsh in The Goonies, the title character of Rudy, and of course Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. From your friends here at TheOneRing.net, Happy Birthday Sean!!
Category: LotR Cast News
Exciting things are happening for Lord of the Rings fans in Boston! The Coolidge Corner Theatre‘s annual ‘Coolidge Award’ is being given to Viggo Mortensen. This means that Aragorn himself will be in town on Monday 5th March to accept his award! The Coolidge Corner Theatre will be showing several of Mortensen’s movies in the run up to March 5th, as well as hosting an all day LotR trilogy marathon screening on Sunday 4th March. On Monday 5th there will be a lunchtime movie screening with a Q&A with Mortensen, followed later by an ‘Evening with Viggo Mortensen’ event.
TORn will of course be present and will bring you a report of all these exciting happenings. One of the more elusive cast members, any chance to see Aragorn in the flesh, and to hear Viggo Mortensen answer the questions of his fans, is a treat indeed. Full details can be found at Coolidge Corner’s website. The movies and dates are as follows:
Tues 28 Feb, 7pm – A History of Violence
Wed 29 Feb, 7pm – A Walk on the Moon
Thurs 1 Mar, 7pm – The Road
Sun 4 Mar, starting at 11am – LotR trilogy screening
Mon 5 Mar, starting at 12noon – a day of events with Viggo Mortensen
Continue reading “Trilogy screening, Viggo Mortensen and a Giveaway in Boston!”
TheOneRing.net is delighted to host Sean Astin tonight for a LIVE event! He will be joining our own Cliff “Quickbeam” Broadway on TORn Tuesday this week for a one-hour Q&A session!
Sean will be talking about his latest projects — including his special endurance/fitness project Run3rd to promote the sport of running as he gears up to run his third LA Marathon. (If you’re already curious, hit up his official Twitter account!)
Plus, he’ll be answering your questions! If you’re wondering how it all works, and how to submit a question for Sean, please read on below! Continue reading “Don’t forget – TORn Tuesday hosts Sean Astin LIVE Tonight!”
TheOneRing.net is delighted to announce that on this coming Tuesday, February 7, none other than Sean Astin will be joining our own Cliff “Quickbeam” Broadway on TORn Tuesday this week for a one-hour Q&A session!
Astin — actor, director, voice artist and producer — is, of course, best known to Tolkien fans as Sam Gamgee in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, but has also made his mark in a career spanning more than 70 films roles, including The Goonies, Toy Soldiers, 50 First Dates and as the indomitable, never-say-die working class hero of Rudy.
He’s played a recurring guest role in the TV series 24 and has written and directed two short films — the academy award nominated Kangaroo Court and The Long And the Short Of It.
And at this week’s TORn Tuesday, he’ll be talking about his latest projects — including his special endurance/fitness project Run3rd to promote the sport of running as he gears up to run his third LA Marathon. (If you’re already curious, hit up his official Twitter account!)
Plus, he’ll be answering your questions! If you’re wondering how it all works, and how to submit a question for Sean, please read on below! Continue reading “TORn Tuesday hosts Sean Astin this week!”

“Forty-two? Oh, that’s not bad for a pointy-eared elvish princeling. Hmph! I myself am sitting pretty on forty-THREE..”
-Gimli to Legolas just after The Battle for Helm’s Deep
The last of the three hunters has finally arrived from Sideshow Collectibles. Gimli, Son of Gloin is the fourth statue from Sideshow’s growing and spectacular The Lord of the Rings statue line. As with the other statues in this line we don’t get an exact screen capture but this moment reminds me of something that could have happened in Moria.
Before the Fellowship sets of from Rivendell Gimli is chosen to represent the race of Dwarves as the venture to destroy the One Ring. Gimli would prove to be very loyal to all involved in the Fellowship and especially so to what would become his friend the Elf Legolas Greenleaf. In the Dwarf would be a great addition to the Fellowship and why he’s one of my favorite characters from Middle-Earth.
Continue reading “Collecting The Precious – Sideshow Collectibles Gimli Statue Review”
There are already a lot of Oscar winners working on The Hobbit. Soon there might be one more. When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the 2011 nominees, Bret McKenzie (“Figwit” in The Lord of the Rings and Lindir
in The Hobbit) turned up in the “Music (Original Song)” category for his “Man or Muppet” from The Muppets. Congratulations and good luck to Bret! The Oscars will be awarded on February 26.
By the way, the highest number of nominations went to Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. Like The Return of the King, it bagged eleven–also without a single actor nomination. The parallel isn’t complete, since Hugo made it into two categories that ROTK didn’t, Sound Editing and Cinematography. It was not in two categories that ROTK won, Makeup and Original Song.
For a full list of nominees, check out the Academy’s website.