6 THINGS ABOUT MORFYDD CLARK
The Welsh actress (33) plays Galadriel, a fierce Elven warrior in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
1 She grew up loving JRR Tolkien’s work. “My dad had read The Hobbit to me and I had the audiobooks of all The Lord of the Rings books. I had four fantasy series that sent me to sleep whenever I was stressed about my school exams.
“Fantasy’s always kind of been an escape for me, but particularly The Lord of the Rings.”
2 She didn’t know she was playing Galadriel until she arrived in New Zealand in 2019 to film the first season of the series.
“I knew that I was playing some sort of elf. But all they said was that they wanted someone who had experience with Shakespeare. I was thinking I was Celebrían [Galadriel’s daughter], because I don’t think I could fathom that it would be
Galadriel.”
3 Being Welsh helped being an elf, said the actress, who attended a Welshlanguage school growing up.
“Something my Tolkien-obsessed mum was really proud of and passed down to us was that Tolkien was inspired by Welsh.
“So weirdly, his works have been a badge of honour for me, because the Welsh are obsessed with the Welsh and anything Welsh.”
4 To play a battlehardened warrior – Galadriel is over 3 000 years old in this series – Morfydd had to undergo exposure therapy.
“I would flinch a lot when people came at me [in fight scenes]. So they did exposure therapy with me, where I would have all these huge, huge men running at me, screaming with swords.
“To stop me from looking frightened. Because I’ve definitely been cast as the victim. And Galadriel is not that.”
5 Galadriel spends most of the second episode of the series in the ocean and me had to learn to swim properly.
“I actually thought I could swim, and after my first lesson I realised I was mistaken and I should have never been in the sea!
“Unfortunately, playing Galadriel, she has to be good at everything. So I had an ex-Olympic [New Zealand] swimmer called Trent Bray [help her].”
6 Her name is pronounced Mor-vith.