Elijah Wood reveals which iconic Lord of the Rings scene almost didn't happen

Elijah Wood recently revealed a little known fact about the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

While speaking at a fan Q&A at Fan Expo Portland, he told the live audience that a particular line from the franchise was filmed during a pickup shoot – in which extra bits are shot after the main production wraps.

Frodo Baggins' well-known line, 'All right then, keep your secrets,' was 'actually shot during pickups,' the 44-year-old actor said, per Collider.

'It was not shot during principal photography. I’m pretty sure that sequence was from pickups,' he said of the The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring moment.

The piece of dialogue is delivered by Wood's Baggins while speaking with Gandalf, played by Ian McKellen.

Wood detailed how exhausting pickup shoots were, as they required early call times and hours of prosthetic application.

'Obviously, the folks who had a lot of makeup had the earliest pickup times. I think Lurtz, the Uruk-hai, was picked up just around midnight to then be put in makeup for five or six hours,' he recalled.

'My earliest pickup was during the first pickups in Osgiliath, and I think it was 3:30 in the morning. It was brutal.'

Last year at the 2025 Texas Film Awards, Wood hinted at how little he was paid for the Lord of the Rings movies.

He shared that the trio of films were shot under a single contract – meaning there was no opportunity to renegotiate pay after the massive success of the initial feature film.

'Because we weren’t making one movie and then renegotiating a contract for the next, it wasn’t the sort of lucrative scenario that you could sort of rest easy for the rest of your life,' he said, per an account from Business Insider.

He added that director Peter Jackson took 'a real gamble' with the decision to film the movies at once, rather than break up the process.

The movies went on to earn a whopping $2.9 billion worldwide, off a $281 million budget, cementing it as one of the biggest cinematic successes ever.

Wood noted that regardless of the 'not massive salaries, the benefit of that was that we were also signing up for something that was going to be a part of our lives forever.' 

His co-stars Sean Astin and Orlando Bloom previously divulged that they earned around $250,000 and $175,000 respectively for all three movies.

Asked by Business Insider what exactly he was compensated for his part, Elijah said the sum was not accurate and 'doesn’t matter.'

He gushed, 'It’s such an honor to have been a part of those films, and they represent some of the best experiences of my life.'

In 2024 it was confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter that a new installment in the franchise, Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, is in the works.