Cate Blanchett bemoaned how she and other stars on Peter Jackson’s record-breaking box-office hit series of films got paid in peanuts. She claimed that she dropped 3 dress sizes due to malnutrition.
“We didn’t get paid peanuts, which means very little money”, she added. “We quite literally got paid in peanuts. Peter would send the Legolas guy out to Aldi on a push bike to buy cheap bags of salted peanuts, which would be distributed to the hungry stars after they’d finished filming for the day. Sometimes, if the previous day’s shoot had gone well, we’d be rewarded with coco pops for breakfast, but not the nice Kelloggs variety but a cheap Aldi version that didn't have kids' toys inside.”
Blanchett, who played Elven Lady Galadriel, explained that John Rhys-Davies, who played Dwarf Gimli, sometimes didn’t eat at all. “They placed peanuts on a table which he couldn’t reach, being a Dwarf.”
Viggo Mortensen, who played Aragorn, said that he used to sneak out at night, travel to Canberra and collect pot noodles from food banks, which he’d bring back for him and his co-stars to share.
At one point, New Zealand Social Services arrived on set, apparently having received an anonymous complaint from one of the actors. Jackson handed out cushions, which all the actors had to place under their shirts, to make their tummies look bigger, and Rhys-Davies was given a crate to stand on to make himself look taller than he actually was.
Jackson has denied the allegations, saying the actors were paid really well and claiming that Rhys-Davies, far from being too small to reach the peanuts table, was actually the tallest actor in the film, the director of Social Services turned up because she was a Tolkien fan, there were no cushions or crates, there were no Aldis near the film set and Canberra isn’t in New Zealand but Australia.
