BILLY BOYD

I think once you get it in your head, that you're not going to do anything bigger, you just do things that you enjoy, which has always been my ethos anyway.

Then there are actors my age like Ethan Hawke, he's in 'Moby Dick,' I love his work. I've been lucky. Alfred Molina, he has real class.

In fact, Russell Crowe once phoned me up to see if I wanted to go to a party but I had to bring my guitar and perform 'Oh Jean.'

I really like acting but, just now, the more I read a script I find myself thinking I'd like to direct rather than act.

I'd be lying if I said it wasn't fun to go to these nights out, like the opening of a film or something, but I dip in and out of it.

After I've been in America for a while, I get homesick for Scotland.

Hobbits are a lot like Scots. It's all about nature and enjoying their land, which is a very Scottish thing.

I think Scotland has some great stories.

The club thing is a world people can associate with, letting your hair down at the weekend.

Rather than thinking, 'If I do this, and in five years I'll be where I want to be,' you're better just doing something that makes you happy now.

My worst habit is whistling while I sleep.

Life in LA is not lying in the sun for months. It is having a 4pm meeting and leaving at noon to sit in traffic for four hours. It's not glam.

But you talk to most filmmakers and it is six, seven, eight years trying to get things off the ground. It is incredible really.

I loved going surfing down on Venice Beach. I'd go out with a board under my arm and think, 'I can't do that in Cranhill.'

I think I have a gift, but I haven't really opened that gift yet and given it to myself.

People are scared to make something that doesn't look like another film that made a lot of money. It means we get 'Four Weddings And A Funeral' made again and again.

Strangely enough, the first time I tried to read [The Lord of the Rings] I was on holiday in Florida. I dropped it in the pool my first day there. If that's not a Pippin thing to do, I don't know what is.

For me, what makes great actors, always is how truthful they are to the character and the story and the emotion that they're trying to tell.

I like people like Ani DiFranco, a band called Elbow, of course John Lennon, George Harrison, Barry White. I have a lot of different influences and hopefully they all come together and make some sense.

I'd like to win a Booker Prize for writing. A Nobel Peace Prize for my work in peace... and I think that'll probably do.

Acting, music, painting... it's very subjective. So what I might think is a great actor, you might think is not a very good actor at all.

He [Viggo Mortensen] was standing behind the camera throwing the apples … And I’ve never seen him so happy.

To play one of the main characters in it, it's not the kind of thing you don't do. Oh, I'd rather not play Pippin in Lord of the Rings... In fact, I'm trying to think - what else would you rather do, you know? I can't actually think of another job that I'd rather do.

I think the ears are a strange look for me. Quite big. But I loved the hair down to my shoulders. It felt right. I'm thinking of letting my hair go.

I wasn't into Tolkien at school really. But the story is timeless, the themes that it touches on are contained in cultures all around the world. The innocent on a quest, the pretender, an inanimate object that holds evil - it's really strange that these themes are there in so many different countries' folklore.