Lord of the Rings star memories of teenage Gets Lost in town days
“THERE are a couple of moments that stand out... that make you feel a bit sad.”
Dominic Monaghan is speaking from his home in Los Angeles via Zoom, where he’s lived for more than a decade. He spins from side-to-side on a gaming chair, gesticulating as he talks. It has just gone past 9am on his side of the Atlantic.
Before opening pleasantries can even conclude he’s buzzing with questions about what’s happening at Manchester United, asking about his old local newspaper and there’s not even a chance for a question as he launches headfirst into a monologue about what our city means to him.
“Manchester is a big deal for me,” he says.
“It becomes even more of a big deal the further you get geographically. The effortless coolness... people’s haircuts, jackets, people’s fashion sense.”
He is hanging onto his Mancunian accent – which he describes as now being “a bit all over the place” – by a thread, having not lived here for 15 years. It’s a topic he endures some “lighthearted” ribbing on from old friends.
Meanwhile, on our end of the line it’s 5pm and getting a bit dark and moody. the Express connects for the conversation from the less glamorous Heaton Chapel – an enthusiastic stone’s throw away from where Monaghan grew up, on a cosy avenue not far from The Moor Top pub in Heaton Moor.
Now 44, that’s where an unsettling memory takes place for his younger self.
Having returned home for the first time since The Fellowship of the Ring had been released in cinemas in December 2001, the lad from Stockport in his early 20s was now an overnight superstar.
After being cast as Meriadoc Brandybuck (known as Merry, to friends) in the late 90s he’d been whisked away to New Zealand for a demanding, often overwhelming shoot which spanned years – cutting him off from family and friends in an pre-social media, pre-video conferencing era.
So it was catch-up time with some familiar faces.
Among them was his next door neighbour’s son who, as a toddler, would be babysat by a teenage Dom. A big draw of the arrangement, Monaghan remembers: “They’d pay me in sweets. That’s how I liked to get paid at that point.
“And I remember coming back to Heaton Moor and he at this point was like, 15 or 16.
“We were just kicking the ball around in the avenue, me and him, and he stopped and said to me ‘Can I have your autograph?’
“I was like ‘oh, but we’re mates. You don’t need my autograph.’ He just said ‘but I want it,’ I was like ‘yeah, OK.’
“It’s a confusing thing to navigate.”
Monaghan had his first taste of the spotlight in Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, a wholesome BBC drama that ran from 1996 to 1998.
During his days at St Anne’s High School in Heaton Chapel he’d perform in plays such as Oliver and Scrooge and was a member of the Manchester Youth Theatre and the Contact Theatre. Meanwhile his dad would slip him a VHS of Raging Bull and other classics as he built out his points of reference.
“I think I’ve probably come to terms with the fact that I can be quite obsessive about things,” he says.
“I can be purposefully overwhelmed with a certain subject matter and I felt that way about acting. So even though I was relatively diligent in other subjects I was a straight-A student in drama, I was constantly asking my drama teacher to put on more plays, give me more homework.
“I was doing plays on a Tuesday night, on the weekend and in my summer holidays. I would learn massive chunks of performances and just replicate them.”
There was a sense among those who guided Monaghan – who was born in Germany before the family relocated to Stockport just before he was a teenager – in his younger years that he did have it in him to “make it”, such was his dedication.
So when St Anne’s careers advisor Mr Brown – who would have to caution other talented students against chasing their dreams, and encourage them to prepare back-up job opportunities – sat down with a teenage Dom, who said ‘I want to be an actor,’ his response was simple: “He didn’t talk me off the ledge, he just said ‘OK, great.’”
During this period he worked as a waiter at the now-no-longer-there Quincy’s restaurant in Heaton Mersey as well as working jobs at the Stockport mail sorting office and BHS (“They still owe me money,” he claims without further explanation).
Aquinas College in Heaviley, Stockport, beckoned next, and through a performance he put on in Bolton, teenage Dom got himself an agent. He’d soon get the train to Leeds with his parents to audition for the soap Emmerdale Farm, now known as Emmerdale, but was turned down.
“But months later another opportunity reared its head – an audition in Manchester for an undisclosed detective show.
“Two really interesting things happened in that audition which have stuck in my brain.
“The first thing was I went into the waiting room where all of these young actors were waiting - maybe 8 or 10 young boys... and as I went in there, there were three or four young lads either from the Contact Theatre, or Manchester Youth Theatre, that I knew and for some reason all of them were dejected that I was there.
“Ah ‘Dom’s here.’ That feeling is so strange, I’d never had that before, that sense of ‘we’re screwed because Dom’s here and Dom’s going to get it.’
“And then I went into the audition, and at the end of the audition they got out an old fashioned polaroid camera and took a picture of each boy to remember them.
“As I was leaving the audition I looked down and all of these polaroids were on the table and none of the kids were smiling. All of the boys were like [Monaghan pulls a serious face to us on Zoom] so when they went to take my picture at the end of the audition I was like [Monaghan pulls a super-smiley, almost scary face] just to mess around, just to have fun, and I found out from the producer, a lovely lady called Carol Parks, who really looked after me on the show, that the reason they called me back was that moment at the very end. They were looking for someone who stood out, cheeky, with a little cavalier attitude.”
While he has such fond memories of the show, he also admits it was “in no way cool” – allowing him free reign to enjoy his favourite Manchester haunts such as Dry Bar, The Hacienda, Fifth and The Mark Addy unrecognised and unhindered. Things were going well.
But then came The Lord of the Rings, a generational phenomenon.
It catapulted Monaghan – whose mother was a nurse from Chorlton having trained at Withington Hospital and whose father was a teacher from Fallowfield – eternally into the carousel of popular culture.
He’d make friends for life while filming the trilogy. He’d develop as an actor under one of the finest directors in cinema, Peter Jackson, and work alongside acting greats such as Sir Ian McKellen, who made the fantastical character of Gandalf earthly, serious and melancholic.
He’d have to move to New Zealand, where filming would take place, and discover a world beyond that of the Manchester Youth Theatre, Old Trafford and Afflecks Palace which had all played their part in shaping him as a young man.
There was so much to look forward to as he embarked on the adventure, but there was pain to endure, too.
“I had to break up with my long-term girlfriend when I moved to New Zealand,” he says.
“I had to say goodbye to my grandmother who was at death’s door. I didn’t see my parents or my brother for, I think, more than a year.”
A demanding, gruelling routine awaited to occupy his mind, however.
“We were just so busy,” he remembers.
“[Upon arrival] it was a couple of months of horse riding and sword fighting and dialect coach and line learning and meeting with the cast.
“You couldn’t really have time to be too upset, and once we started shooting the four hobbits were in first and out last each day. We were probably in at 5.15am and would be out by 7pm maybe 7.30pm. Drive home for half an hour or an hour, have some food, crash, wake up the next morning and get going again.
“So I didn’t have a massive amount of time to be sad, but there were moments... but I was also making great friends.”
Alongside Monaghan at the start of the epic shoot was Billy Boyd, Elijah Wood and Sean Astin in completing the foursome of hobbits in the trilogy.
Together they experienced wild, immediate adoration in the early 2000s as the films were released and J. R. R. Tolkien’s beloved novels translated into the mainstream.
Dominic said: “I don’t think any of us knew how big The Lord of the Rings was going to become. I knew it was a massive film but even as the years go on, it’s almost as if the mythology gets bigger and bigger.
“So now the cool kids that are out and about in town boozing are coming over and chatting to me.
“I’ve always been able to personally micromanage people and I was lucky that my best friend of all time Tom is a big lad. He’s big, he’s strong, he was a firefighter, so if anything slightly dodgy was happening I always had my best mate by my side to kind of give them a bit of an evil look.”
Following the roaring success of the trilogy, released each Christmas from 2001 to 2003, came Lost – a cinematic, highbudget mammoth of a TV show before the likes of Game of Thrones came on the scene.
Despite hopping from one major pop culture moment to another, the fact Lost was largely filmed in Hawaii gave Monaghan some much-welcomed seclusion from the fallout of The Lord of the Rings.
“We were literally on an Island,” he says.
“You’re protected. You’re in your own little bubble. I loved Hawaii, which is interesting because most cast members seemed to really struggle with it. I loved it.
“I kept chameleons.
I loved the weather. I loved the storms, the trees, the forest, the beaches, I was absolutely in love with the place. And completely at home there.”
Lost became a worldwide ratings behemoth, and Monaghan’s character Charlie was the heart of the show. He insists the myth that’s found its way onto fan forums that he initially auditioned for conman Sawyer is false, but when cast as Charlie they tailored the character around his Mancunian heritage.
After a wildly successful first three seasons, Lost stuttered to its climax in 2010. It peaked in 2007, the finale episode of Season 3 entitled Through the Looking Glass, when Monaghan’s character undergoes a tragic death as he desperately warns his fellow heroes of an impending threat with the iconic “Not Penny’s Boat” hand message. If you know, you know.
Later, Monaghan would feature in roles that included starring alongside Megan Fox in the Eminem video for Love The Way You Lie, star in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and share his passion for nature with the show Wild Things with Dominic Monaghan.
Currently he is working on a project that is “under lock and key” and can’t be revealed, while a trailer for his upcoming film Edge of the World has just been released.
He says he is often recognised in Los Angeles, New York, Germany, New Zealand and Australia far more than when he comes back to England – except for in London and Manchester Airport when selfie requests are more common. He visits Manchester once a year, usually around Christmas, and during the summer spends time with his family in Spain, where many of them have relocated.
One piece of home that has followed him to Los Angeles is Manchester United. His dad’s side of the family are Blues, and his mother’s side are Reds – with a few “anomalies” on either side.
He remembers his uncle Paul always bringing him United badges back from games as a kid, as well as shirts and matchday programmes, sparking the obsession early on. Then he’d start going himself, arriving at Old Trafford in a slightly different fashion to the modern era.
“I remember being able to walk into the ticket stalls on match days and buy a ticket for £8.50. Can you imagine trying that now?”
His heroes of the era were Bryan Robson, Gordon Strachan, Norman Whiteside, Remi Moses and Jesper Olsen, and as he lists them his suppressed Mancunian accent rears its head more and more.
Then came the glory days of Giggs, Beckham, the Nevilles, Scholes and Cantona. “We were completely spoiled,” he admits.
Now City, his dad’s team, are the dominant force.
“He’s enjoying the spoils of those triumphs. But that’s what I love about it, it gives us that dynamic, having a laugh.”
Since the pandemic began, Monaghan has noticed a “massive jump” in the questions he’ll be asked on social media about The Lord of the Rings and Lost. His explanation? “People are in a lot of anxiety and uncertainty and sometimes what you need is a movie trilogy or a TV show that you know the ending of. So you can just take a breath. And just relax.
He accepts it would be “ridiculous” for him to complain about his situation given the hardships being endured around the world: “I love the job I do and I’m able to financially be OK with ultimately being a year off from my work.”
He continued: “I’ve lost a lot over the last year. I’ve lost a lot of friends, a lot of connections.
“I’ve had to be OK with those things. But I’ve also gained a lot. My garden has never been so healthy, my animals have never been so happy, I’ve never had more of an opportunity for selfexploration and self-care.
“And you have to always be mining for that diamond in this rough period we’ve gone through. There are things you have to grasp hold of in terms of positivity. It’s just been harder to find them in the last year. But they are there.”