Amazon.com: Had you read The Lord of the Rings trilogy before you took the role of Frodo Baggins?

Elijah Wood: I'd read The Hobbit, which was a beloved book from childhood. So I was familiar with the material, enough to want to be a part of it. But in a turn that fans will probably deem sacrilege, I didn't finish the trilogy while we were making the movies. If I was a fan and I read that the actor playing Frodo hadn't read the books, I'd want to burn him at the stake.

Amazon.com: And did you subsequently finish them?

Elijah Wood: No, I'm embarrassed to say. But the environment on the set was so geared to Tolkien that we were constantly surrounded by the history of Middle-earth, books, references. The Lord of the Rings was constantly around us. I had enough information to feed my character and have an understanding of the stories.

Amazon.com: Were you aware of the intensity of the interest in the films while you were in New Zealand making them?

Elijah Wood: It was something I was aware of when I got there. Then the Web sites started booming as we were filming. What I felt was a certain passion that made me want to follow Peter's [Jackson, the director] vision. I wanted to create a Frodo that would be true to millions of fans.

Amazon.com: That sounds like a tall order.

Elijah Wood: Any time you take a book to film, you're taking what's personal to people--and everyone has a personal interpretation when they read. So you're trying to make a Frodo that's true to readers' vision. Still, once we started filming, the fear and pressure kind of drifted away and I gained confidence in what I was doing. I feel I've done the best Frodo I can.

Amazon.com: How did it feel when you saw the finished film? There must have been a lot of things--computer-generated images--that you were seeing for the first time.

Elijah Wood: Seeing the final film was overwhelming. You spend so much time putting it all together; there was so much blood, sweat, and tears that went into this. But then to see it laid out in such a beautiful way was kind of shocking. I was seeing a massive part of my life played out, in ways I never dreamed of. We knew sort of what it would look like; we'd seen drawings. But it was amazing to see the massive shots of those beautiful landscapes with the cities laid in digitally. The other thing about seeing it for the first time was that it made me think, "I can't believe I have to wait a year to see the next one."