posted by Jasmine

Cornwall, England- Dominic Mondaghan and his friend Billy Boyd have just spent a couple of weeks surfing at one of this British coastal region's many resorts. The two actors, friend since their year-and-a-half-long shoot on three Lord of the Rings movies in New Zealand, are also collaborating on a screenplay.

"That's one of the rewards of embarking on an epic journey like that," says the 24-year-old Monaghan.

J.R.R. Tolkein's sprawling trilogy is the literate world's answer to Hollywood sci-fi. Legions of fans and Hollywood moguls, each with their own self-interest at heart, are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the first installment. Will the films satisfy the loyalists? Will the films satisfy the suits? Will Monaghan be a worthy Hobbit?

"I play a Hobbit called Merry," says the born-in-Berlin and raised-in-England actor. "He's one of the real comedic elements in the movie. When we first meet him, he's happy and friendly--he represents the innocence in the film. But at the end of the trilogy, this young man, who has never suffered any emotional loss, is a war-torn soldier returning from the brink of death.

"The intriguing things was to show his metamorphosis," adds the actor, who is making his initial foray into Hollywood hype factory with Lord of the Rings, his most notable previous big-screen title being Boomer, with Rutger Hauer and Martin Sheen. "To show how he changes in so many ways without making him any less appealing to the audience. But I had plenty of time to make the character mine."

Still, the job was tough. But luckily for the actor, he doesn't "think acting should be easy--you should be challenged by it," he stresses. "I'm always ready to go through hard times for the end product. We [including Hobbit pals Elijah Wood and Sean Astin] all felt we went on an epic journey just making the film--and in the film itself, all the characters take an epic journey, so we kind of mirrored what was going on in our lives, which was interesting."

Actually, taking part in this project, which also stars Ian McKellen, Christopher Lee, Liv Tyler and Cate Blanchett, is the fulfillment of a childhood fantasy. "I read the book when I was fifteen years old and it became one of my favorites," he recalls. "When I heard there was a movie being made of it, I felt it was fated that I be involved with it."