Tony Shalhoub "The Monk" as Bilbo

[wolfix]

Tony Shalhoub is an excellent actor and looks like a younger version of Ian.

What do you think?

 

[Altaira]

The syntax for you picture link wasn't quite correct, so I hope you don't mind that I corrected it. Visit our TORn 201/FAQ on the welcome board for more info on how to post links and/or pics here - and/or stay tuned for the debut of a great tutorial by our own Magpie. []

The pic is interesting! Thanks for contributing to the ongoing speculation about who would be perfect to play Bilbo.

 

[N.E. Brigand]

A couple times, actually.
Have you ever seen Big Night, arguably the best film of 1996? (Though I will also take arguments for Shall We Dance.)

Here's a link to a short previous discussion of Shalhoub as Bilbo.

 

[ShadoFaxs]

Tony is a wonderful and versatile actor. I'm a fan of Big Night - what a great cast that movie had.

But Tony doesn't look very much like Ian Holm and his coloring doesn't look at all...erm...British. He has olive skin tones and dark hair and eyes that say "mediterranean" to me. He's also a bit tall for a hobbit - over 5'10", when the hobbit actors are required to be 5'7" or under. (Ian Holm is barely 5'6", if that.)

I'm sure he could master the accent and other aspects of the role, but nothing about him screams "Bilbo" to me.

 

[Deni]

he´s an excellent actor...and you´re absolute right...he looks really a bit like ian holm...
but ...i thought we have already an actor for bilbo.
..haven´t we??? I don´t know...well....but it´s a great suggestion[sly]

--------------------------------
and welcome to torn

 

[ShadoFaxs]

GDT posted here that he and PJ haven't decided on any new cast members yet and was quite specific it will be awhile before they seriously talk with any actor about playing Bilbo. The runours are just that - rumours

Shalhoub is taller, darker, and has a narrower face than Holm. I don't see the resemblance myself.

 

[Deni]

but i think you could make him to be that hobbit bilbo...it´s very hard to find the best actor for this role..
in my opinion i´d like to see ian again..
he´s perfect for bilbo...but i think that "the monk" is gonna be well ,too...maybe he´s not perfect,but good..

i think pj an gdt will find the best one..

..and who you would like to see in the film for bilbo??

 

[terrymerry]

He`s got to be British or else be able to do a perfect lower middle class English accent. That what Billbo was. I don`t think some of you understand our English class system. You can be a millionaire and still be lower class over here, or you could be a tramp and be middle class it`s all in the schooling and your environment when your grow up , nothing to do with money...

 

[wolfix]

He`s got to be British or else be able to do a perfect lower middle class English accent. That what Billbo was. I don`t think some of you understand our English class system. You can be a millionaire and still be lower class over here, or you could be a tramp and be middle class it`s all in the schooling and your environment when your grow up , nothing to do with money...

Point taken... however, Elijah and Sean are American and pulled it off, at least for us non-Brits.

I also agree, Peter will choose the right actor.

Best,

wolfix

 

[Dreamdeer]

I thought that Bilbo was a very respectable upper class hobbit.

 

[Woodyend]

After all he had the most expensive hobbit hole in all the Shire.

 

[terrymerry]

"Elijah and Sean are American and pulled it off" yes they did, and Sean did a excellent west country accent. If he could get it right no problem, but it`s not an easy to do...

 

[terrymerry]

Respectable lower to middle class hobbit, I see him about the same class as a retired doctor , comfortable enough to employ an gardener. He was`nt completely respectable since he had a little Took about him.

 

[Annael]

the noblest family in the realm? I always thought of the Thain as being about the same as an English Earl, and the Master of Buckland a baron at least.

 

[Dreamdeer]

Whoa! Wait one minute. Aren't doctors about as high as you can go before getting to entrenched old power? (Entrenched old power meaning socialite families in the USA, people with noble titles in the UK, whether or not they have spent their family fortunes.)

 

[Bilbo the Rover]

Hobbits had nut brown skin and thick ,curly brown hair, that's from Tolkien himself. Even if there was a Fallohide admixture, most Hobbits were not fair haired or skinned. As for looking "British" , the Welsh and Cornish are of a darker complexion and their hair tends to be dark.

Tony is a wonderful and versatile actor. I'm a fan of Big Night - what a great cast that movie had.

But Tony doesn't look very much like Ian Holm and his coloring doesn't look at all...erm...British. He has olive skin tones and dark hair and eyes that say "mediterranean" to me. He's also a bit tall for a hobbit - over 5'10", when the hobbit actors are required to be 5'7" or under. (Ian Holm is barely 5'6", if that.)

I'm sure he could master the accent and other aspects of the role, but nothing about him screams "Bilbo" to me.

 

[Darkstone]

Aren't doctors about as high as you can go before getting to entrenched old power?

It's lawyers now. Doctors were effectively eaten alive by malpractice insurance. With college loans, office leases, and home mortgages most of them are in debt up to their eyeballs.

 

[terrymerry]

Hardly a realm , more like a backwater of a maybe twenty pretty farming villages or so, where all the latest fashions arrive several years later, and no murders are committed, where the people are very happy and self contained within the Shire.
It is true that the Welsh and Cornish are of a darker complexion, but I`ve always seen Bilbo as Anglo-Saxon, a bit like Devon, where there`s mixture of Saxons and Angles . The Romans for 500 years to the overlords, the Normans came and conquered Britain not forgetting the Vikings that took most of the northern lands ... that's why English is such a rich language, there so many names for similar meanings that's interwoven into our English language.
Doctors in Britain arn`t considered upper class as they might be in the states, unless they have a little blue blood in there vains. Tolkien was writing his books in the 1930s / 1940s and Britain now is not the Britain 30s/40s, it was a total has different culture, a very much class based societies where you knew your place.

 

[Dreamdeer]

 

[Annael]

Doctors were effectively eaten alive by malpractice insurance. With college loans, office leases, and home mortgages most of them are in debt up to their eyeballs.

My dad's a doctor, and we were never wealthy; we went camping for vacations, and we all had to earn half our college costs. 'Course he was a pediatrician which is the lowest on the rung for doctors, money-wise; a surgeon makes a lot more, but as Darkstone points out, also pays a lot more in malpractice insurance for the inevitable lawsuit (in which the attorneys will take between a third and a half of the winnings). My dad quit practicing the day he turned 65 and could stop paying the insurance and still be covered against someone deciding to sue him for a past event. No one ever did sue him, but the threat of a malpractice suit colored his life and led to him quitting medicine early (much to the distress of his patients, many of whom were the third generation of a family that he'd cared for).

We tried for tort reform in this state a couple of years ago, but the myth of wealthy arrogant doctors put about by the attorneys worked still, and it was voted down. I know one malpractice lawyer who planned to work only until he won his first big settlement, then buy a house on the lake and a boat and retire. He achieved that at 35.