Читать книгу An A-Z of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit - Sarah Oliver - Страница 18

 Name: Bifur

 Alias: None

 Race: Dwarf of Khazad-dûm (not of Durin’s line)

 Played by: William Kircher

 Character description: Bifur is the brother of Bombur and the cousin of Bofur. He wears a yellow hood and joins the quest to get a share in the treasure. He is descended from ironworkers and coal miners from the West, not from the Longbeard Dwarves of the House of Durin. He plays the clarinet and is fond of apple tart!

The actor chosen to play Bifur was William Kircher, who is hugely popular in New Zealand. His professional acting career started when he graduated from the New Zealand Drama School at the age of eighteen (he had been the youngest student in his class as he had lied about his age in order to get on the course). Since then he has acted in over 100 professional theatre productions, as well as appearing in numerous TV shows and movies. He has played several police officers over the years and quite a few bad guys, too.

William has also stepped the other side of the camera as a producer and television company executive. For years he refused to attend auditions and turned down jobs he was offered because he no longer wanted to act. This all changed when Robert Sarkies approached him for the 2006 movie Out of the Blue, based on the Aramoana Massacre. Up until that point he had thought that being a producer might be better than being an actor, but changed his mind after being offered the role of police officer Stu Guthrie, and after he had a disappointing experience at a conference. He explained to NZ on Screen: ‘For some time I thought being a producer would be a more fulfilling career than being an actor but then I went to a conference in Cannes with 300 other producers, all desperately chasing finance for their projects and realised being an actor wasn’t so bad after all!’

In his spare time William likes to spend time with his wife, Nicole Chesterman, a rock singer and talent agent, and their four daughters. They enjoy walking their dogs as a family and William loves fishing. He lives in Eastbourne in the southern North Island of New Zealand.

During one of the behind-the-scenes production videos, William discussed how the dwarf actors prepared before filming began. He said: ‘We started with three months of intense training: we did stunt fighting, horse riding; we did the gym four times a week, we did dwarf movement intensely. They did it essentially by breaking us down, reducing us to the absolute ameba stage and then building us up again as dwarves.’

All the delays to filming at the start actually helped William and his new colleagues as it allowed them to spend more time training, and they also had more time to bond with each other. When in costume they had to carry 80 kg of props, plus the weight of their fat suits.

In the first Hobbit press conference, William admitted that The Lord of the Rings movies had set the bar high. ‘We are all really focused on the work at this stage,’ he said. ‘We have a lot to live up to and are completely and utterly determined to live up to it.’