Orlando: This is Orlando and you’re logged on to The One Ring dot neck … net, even. [grins]

[music and scenes from the gathering]

Quickbeam: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The One Ring.net .. we’re here at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles celebrating an evening of NZ Cinema …. which is being sponsored by the ambassador from the country of NZ.

[more music and scenes]

Quickbeam: [holding mic for Orlando] I wanna ask you a couple of trick questions … from the fans … Everybody would like to know … How is it you managed to get your head inside an immortal, undying Elf, who might be 2 or 3000 years old … I mean, as an actor, how did you get into that space for that?

Orlando: Hmmm … I think … You know, what I really focused on for Legolas was the physicality, because I felt that if I could portray, um, through physical movement exactly what was going on inside his head it would be able, it would express something more to the audience. So, you know, if you think about somebody who’s lived that long …. I would imagine they spend a lot of time, like … meditating … and you know um …

Quickbeam: Elf yoga?!

Orlando: [smiles] That kind of thing! … but not. But you know it’s sort of like um …[pondering] it’s a head space thing… you know, it’s like … if you’ve lived that long … you know when you have, maybe a week … of time on your hand where you have nothing to do … maybe you’re on holiday and you just, at some point in that time you got really relaxed, you find this moment of tranquillity … this moment of, like, you’re in another space, another time, another world … and I think that that’s the world that Legolas lives in and I tried to portray that through the intensity of the situation that he was constantly going through … you know, and I just wanted him to be a centered and focused kind of being, you know, with ... um ... the physical characteristics of, uh, say … Samurai.

Quickbeam: Yes. Excellent analogy!

Orlando: That’s really what I felt he possesses, you know. Not only are the elves kind of immortal and ageless, … they have and make more beauty than any other being…. They … they are these … the eldest beings in MiddleEarth and they’re capable of pretty much turning their hand to anything. So I wanted to portray that.

Quickbeam: Yes! … and I thought it was brilliant … brilliantly played by you because I could see that physicality .. the way that you moved almost catlike …

Orlando: Thank you!

Quickbeam: … and the way you walked in the snow… and the way that you almost didn’t seem to blink most of the time.

Orlando: That was quite difficult but yeah, that was part of that thing of trying to portray that kind of real, live, you know that … you know, living breathing elf. <shrugs>

Quickbeam: Very well done!

Orlando: Nice to see you...