Lord Of The Rings ended up being something I did after everyone else went home, basically. I was then the tallest member of the fellowship [at 6ft 1] and they needed lower eye-lines and so my stand-in, who was a small fellow, ended up getting all the lines bowled to him while the continuity lady gave the answers back, and then at the end of the day, I would come in and do my bit. Part of the joy of film-making, of theatre, is your fellow actors. It was actually the loneliest job I’ve ever done.

I think Sir Ian McKellen said the same thing about his role.

Yes, because the technology had so advanced! I went down and I saw Ian in one room and these very tall dwarves in the other room, and they were just dialling the proportions in – one lot of cameras there, one lot of cameras there – and interlaying them. But he was working very much on his own, and that’s tough.

Mine was compounded by the fact that I was so ugly because –well, I’m never good at the best of times!—but I was hideous. Medical adhesive is wonderful, it’s hypoallergenic, you don’t have an allergic reaction to it. But it binds to the surface of the skin and it’s not designed to be taken off and put on on a daily basis. The skin around your eyes is about the thickness of two cigarette papers, and it just abraded. So then the face becomes puffed with fluid, as it tries to repair. I looked hideous. I was so hideous that my then-girlfriend actually said to me ‘Sweetheart, I don’t know how to say this to you, but I can’t bear to look at you. I’ve just got to go back to L.A. until you’ve finished this.’ And she was right to do it, I did look hideous. I felt disgusted with my appearance and it’s very hard to work under those circumstances. But that’s what you have to do, it’s part of the business of being an actor, you focus on what you’re doing.

But I think there’s a bit of real human rage that comes through old Gimli sometimes!