Elijah Wood is famous for playing pint-sized hobbit Frodo Baggins in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, but how tall is the actor in real life? Alongside the Lord Of The Rings films, Elijah Wood is best known these days for playing Ryan Newman in FX’s dark comedy series Wilfred and Todd Brotzman in the BBC America sci-fi show Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, but he’s actually been acting since he was a child.
His first brush with fame came with a cameo in the music video for Paula Abdul’s song “Forever Your Girl” which he followed with a bit part in Back To The Future Part II and a meatier role in TV movie Child In The Night. He went on to star in movies including Forever Young and Flipper and by his late teens had a string of roles in films like disaster flick Deep Impact, Ang Lee’s critically acclaimed The Ice Storm and sci-fi horror The Faculty.
More recently Wood has found success with movies like horror remake Maniac and is the co-founder of production company SpectreVision, which specializes in horror and has produced such distinct films as A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, The Greasy Strangler and Mandy. Still, his most famous role to date is playing Frodo in Peter Jackson’s epic Lord Of The Rings trilogy which makes his height rather difficult to judge – considering the average height of a hobbit is somewhere between two and four feet, according to J.R.R. Tolkien lore. However, Celeb Heights estimates Elijah Wood is around five feet five inches tall so he has at least a couple of feet on the average hobbit.
Playing a tiny character like Frodo has apparently caused some confusion over how tall Elijah Wood is. Earlier this year, the actor took part in WIRED’s Autocomplete Interview series which sees celebrities answer the internet’s most asked questions about them. The interview revealed that one question denizens of the internet frequently ask about Wood is “How did they make Elijah Wood small?”
Wood explained the height difference between hobbits and taller characters in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy was created partly by hobbit actors filming scenes separately which were then edited in during post-production. Another bit of camera trickery used the more traditional method of forced perspective which uses props and positioning to make one character appear bigger than another. This method was used near the beginning of The Fellowship Of The Ring when Gandalf and Frodo Baggins ride into Bag End together on a horse-drawn cart so that Ian McKellen – who’s a little over five feet ten inches in height – looked towering compared to the five feet five inches tall Elijah Wood.
