Jake Gyllenhaal Once Auditioned for Frodo Baggins and Just Fucked It All Up

Once upon a time many moons ago, before The Lord of the Rings had become an international classic, Jake Gyllenhaal’s agents had him pegged to play the iconic Frodo Baggins. In an interview on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, Jake shares his audition story. When Peter Jackson was said to be making the movies, apparently everyone jumped at the chance:

I got a call from like 14 agents. They were all so excited, and when agents are excited, it’s intense. So they were like, ‘Oh guess what? They’re making The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson’s making it, it’s gonna be three movies over three-and-a-half years, and when they said they need a hobbit, we thought, ‘Jake!’

And now I can’t stop picturing him as a hobbit. I mean, Elijah Wood just screams, I’m a tiny man born to play a Hobbit in the rolling hills of Middle Earth, so in retrospect Jake seems like a much less obvious choice of character. But Jake seems to think he couldn’t have been a better choice:

Have you seen my feet?!

Although we know he didn’t end up getting the part, he did audition for it. Ill-prepared, he went through all the motions of his audition lackadaisically.

Then I had a scene with lines, and everyone has a British accent in that, but I didn’t do an accent, and Peter Jackson literally turned to me like, ‘You are the worst actor that I have ever seen. He was like, ‘Did anyone tell you you were supposed to do an accent?’

So suffice to say that’s why Peter Jackson did not cast Jake Gyllenhaal. But Jake just couldn’t accept it. He apparently yelled:

But I’m a hobbit! they literally had to drag me out of there.

And that’s the legend of how Elijah Wood became Frodo.