New Zealand actor Jed Brophy celebrates a birthday on October 29. Photo via entertainment-focus.com.

Jed Brophy, Kiwi actor and director, is celebrating his 51^st birthday today! Fans of The Hobbit films are looking forward to seeing Jed again as Nori the Dwarf when The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies hits cinemas in December 2014.

Jed has the distinction of having acted in every one of Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth films. Before he became Nori for The Hobbit, Jed appeared in The Lord of the Rings as a Nazgûl, several orcs, an elf, and one of the Rohirrim. Jed’s association with Peter Jackson isn’t limited to Middle-earth. He has worked with Peter Jackson on nearly every project the director has done, including roles in Braindead (1992), Heavenly Creatures (1994), and King Kong (2005). Jed has an extensive list of credits for many other directors as well, including television roles in Xena: Warrior Princess and Legend of the Seeker.

Jed Brophy played several different orcs in ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ including Sharku in ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.’ Photo via Jed Brophy. Photo copyright New Line, Warner Bros.

Jed has two sons, Riley and Sadwyn. Sadwyn played young Eldarion, son of Aragorn and Arwen, in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). Jed and Riley have worked together on stage, appearing recently in An Unseasonable Fall of Snow.

One of Jed’s recent projects has been “The Minister of Chance,” a unique series that began as a crowd-funded audio drama starring Julian Wadham, Jenny Agutter, Jed Brophy, Lauren Crace, Paul Darrow, Philip Glenister, Tamsin Greig, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann. The creators of the series are working to turn the series into a feature film, and are nearing the end of a Kickstarter campaign to fund the first of the four episodes of the film. You can watch the story’s Prologue below, and the Kickstarter project is here.

‘The Minister of Chance’ Prologue

Jed is a fan favorite at cons, and a frequent con guest, including at Dragon Con 2014. Amanda Capley and Valdís of Middle-earth News had the opportunity to sit down with Jed for an interview. To celebrate his birthday, here is a little taste of what you can expect in the full interview, to be published soon!

Amanda: Apart from Scene 88, what was the most physically demanding scene in ‘The Hobbit?’

Jed: The one that’s very similar—and I talked about this in the panel today—is we did a scene on the wet set where we were fighting the stone giants or the stone giants were fighting, and when we got wet it… just the weight… I weighed my costume, I weighed myself and then I weighed myself with my costume, my costume was 27 or 28 k’s [kilograms] full of water. And it was really, really hard. That was a day where we were incredibly tired. And also the full battle armor. It was quite restrictive, and, you know, wearing that all day, it got very heavy on the shoulders. But, you know, having said that, they were tough days, but I don’t remember them now, I don’t remember the physically, you know, at the end of the day, be like “Man, this is really, really tough, I’m not looking forward to tomorrow.” But we’d do it, I think all of us would do it all again tomorrow, because it was one of those extraordinary experiences. I think that the discomfort is minimal in comparison to the good times.

Thank you, Jed, for all the good times you’ve brought to the fans of Middle-earth! And from all of us at Middle-earth News: Hippy bathday, Jed!

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