Twenty-one years on from the release of The Fellowship Of The Ring, it’s tough to imagine other actors in those parts.

Who else but Ian McKellen could breathe such warmth and wisdom into Gandalf the Grey and can you picture anyone but Viggo Mortensen as the heroic, noble Aragorn?

Of all those actors and all those roles, however, there’s one that seems so pre-ordained, that it’s hard to see how JRR Tolkien didn’t have him specifically in mind when he wrote the character, albeit 27 years before the actor was even born.

The Lord Of The Rings series is the ultimate ensemble piece, yet it’s Elijah Wood’s sweet-natured Frodo Baggins that’s the undoubted lead.

It’s his journey from the shielded environs of Bagend to the fiery menace of Mount Doom that carries us through the three films, and it’s a part that, had director Peter Jackson got it wrong, could well have botched the entire franchise.

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Elijah Wood, who turns 41 today, was just 16 years old when he was informed by Harry Knowles of movie website Ain’t It Cool News that Peter Jackson had just been announced as the director of the first live-action adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings.

Although Wood hadn’t read **that** book, he had read The Hobbit, so was familiar, in part, with the world of Middle-earth.

He also knew that The Lord Of The Rings was a big deal and, as a fan of Jackson’s 1994 flick Heavenly Creatures, was excited about what this New Zealand-born film director might do with these famously unfilmable books.

Read more: yahoo