With singer, songwriter, actor and all-around inspiring superstar David Bowie having departed this Earth earlier this year, more details about his life begin to emerge.
One of the latest pieces of information comes courtesy actor Dominic Monaghan, who confirmed longtime rumors that David Bowie wanted to appear in the Lord of the Rings movies.
Monaghan, who went on to portray Merry in those films, recently admitted that as he was sitting in a casting office regarding his own role in the movie, he saw David Bowie there, too.
"I was at the Hubbard's, which is a pretty notorious casting agency office in London, doing an audition for Lord of the Rings, and when it ended I went over and talked to John Hubbard, who was running the audition, and he said, 'Hey, it went really well, you should wait around for 5 or 10 mins, we'll give you some feedback,' " said Monaghan to the Huffington Post. "I thought, 'Oh, OK, cool,' and I sat in the reception office.
"As I was reading a magazine, waiting, David Bowie came in and signed his little list and went in. And I'm assuming he read for Gandalf. I can't think of anything else he would've read for. He may have read for something else, but I'm a huge David Bowie fan, and I was lucky enough to know his son now so just seeing him in person was pretty special to me."
However, it's likely that it wasn't Gandalf that Bowie read for, but for the Elf King Elrond instead, as the rumor at the time was that Bowie wanted to portray him in the film.
However, as fans know, Bowie didn't get the part. Instead, that role went to actor Hugo Weaving. Peter Jackson once stated that he didn't want actors who were too well known in the roles of the Lord of the Rings characters because they were already so familiar to fans of the J.R.R. Tolkien books that inspired the movies.
"These are famous, famous characters, loved for nearly 50 years," said Jackson at the time. "To have a famous, beloved character and a famous star colliding is slightly uncomfortable."
Of course, fans were certainly happy with Weaving's performance in the movies, but it's still nice to imagine the Goblin King in those pointy ears and long, ornate elf robes.
