Interview from Stephen Hunter ( Bombur in the trilogy "The Hobbit" )
It is an honor for me and a great pleasure to present to you today the interview of Stephen Hunter alias BOMBUR in the trilogy of P.Jackson THE HOBBIT !
( For information : all articles can be translated into the language of your choice by clicking on the button located below TRANSLATION on the right of the blog's home page )
Yes you read well, he kindly agreed to answer a few questions for my blog and i can't thank him enough !
So let's start our journey...
1 : For those who don't know you yet ( I doubt but you never know). Could you please introduce yourself to our readers ? And tell us how you came to this acting career ? ( your experience etc… )
Thanks. Nice to talk to you and your readers. My name is Stephen Hunter. I played BOMBUR in The Hobbit films. I started acting at around 10 with a drama club, and then all through high school. I come from New Zealand, where i lived until my early 30’s, when i moved to Sydney, Australia. Who is now my home. I guess i was drawn into acting by the playfulness and also the inclusion. It was a way to make friends and probably at the time, a way to be accepted. It turned out i was actually quite good at it !
2 : Are you basically a "fan" of Tolkien ? (books etc...) and if so which ones ?
It's such a vast universe that you have the choices of course…
I think we read the Hobbit in school when i was younger, and not long before i left NZ, i read The Lord of The Rings - it took me months ! I can’t say i was a fan until reading that book. I did actually auction for LOTR in NZ, and obviously didn’t get anywhere with it. I decided i want to work with Peter Jackson, after watching the behind the scenes videos from LOTR.
3 : I guess working with Peter Jackson in particular must not have been easy. Tell us about your experiences on the set of The Hobbit please ! (Anecdotes are welcome of course...)
It was great working with Peter. He is so passionate about everything he does, but at the same time, he is quite low key and very private. He is mad on planes and he showed up his collection once at an air show. He’d play tricks all the time, usually on Mark Hadlow. He once sent scale double Kirin Shah, who was also Elijahs "double" in LOTR, into to hump Marks legs like a dog during the goblin cave fight scene. He has a great sense of humour. I think his genius too, is that he has the whole vision in his head. With all the delays and disruptions at the start of filming, they were up against it from day 1. I don’t think anyone else could have pulled it off.
4 : What did you take away from this experience ? And more generally what has it brought you on a personal level but also on a professional level ?
The biggest thing i got was the friendships i forged with the other dwarves. Many of them are now live long friends. It was a long journey, and once that was challenging at times, even though we always had to remind ourselves we had the best job in the world ! It taught me that as an actor, you have to be prepared for anything, especially physically. After being very intimidated for the first week or so, i also gained a lot of confidence, and realised i actually did belong in this company of incredible actors.
5 : Now let's talk about the aftermath of the hobbit ! What were your different shoots ? Professional occupations? I guess it was not easy to find a "normal" life after such an adventure...
After we finished, i went through an incredible lull and felt quite deflated. It took a while to really enjoy acting again after such a high. From that, i learnt that i just love what i do, and that those 2 or so years were an exception, and most jobs aren't like that ! I actually remember precisely when i started to feel comfortable again. I was booked for a small half day on "Home & Away" and feeling really great just to be a working actor.
6 : Tell us about your future projects ? I'm sure this will be of interest to our readers…
There are quite a few projects due for release this year actually. Some of them were shot n 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic, but have obviously had their release date delayed, like many films. "Ruby’s Choice" is out in March in Australia & NZ. We filmed in July/August 2020. It stars screen legend Jane Seymour - as my mother in law, Australian screen legend Jacqueline MacKenzie as my wife Sharon and Coco Jack Gillies - future screen legend, as my daughter Tash. It’s about a family dealing with dementia, which sound a little hard going, but there’s a lot of lightness and fun to it also. The other film is a prequel of sorts to "Children of the Corn". This was on only project in the world, aside from one in Iceland, that kept filming as the Pandemic started. Unbelievable that we got finished. I think it’s due for a worldwide cinema release later this year. There’s also a pretty big project that i was a small part of. I can’t much else about that, and a couple of great TV shows that i filmed at the end of last year and the start f this year. It’s been a pretty busy couple of years actually, all things considered !
7 : We are coming to the end of this interview. Thank you again for the time you gave me! And I'm going to leave you the last word (everything you have to say or almost in summary ^^)... I await your news with great impatience in any case…
Thanks for having me ! The ongoing love and support for this crazy project we shot 10 years ago, just keeps amazing me. I’ve always loved doing fan conventions, as there are far worse things to do than have people come up and tell you how much they loved the films and our part in it. We really are blessed, those of us who got to be part of it.
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