You have changed, Bilbo Baggins.

You are not the same Hobbit as the one who left the Shire.

I like his innocence, I guess, and I like playing the change from

innocence to experience I suppose, I like that.

I said he has a figurative journey as well as the

literal one he goes on and that you get to play different aspects.

Every actor wants to play different - just things -

you know beats within a moment, beats within a scene, you don't just

want to be playing the same thing all the time

and you certainly get that aspect to Bilbo,

definitely by the second film.

There's a person with more iron in his backbone

I guess and he's just seen more so his

whole worldview has shifted.

I

found something in the Goblin tunnels.

Found what?

What did you find?

My courage.

I think like with any real-life heroics

you know, no hero considers himself a hero, you speak to people in

the fire service or the military where ever,

they don't think what they're doing is heroic at all.

And Bilbo doesn't see it. Its kind of heroism that

creeps up on him. Out of necessity and

because he's gotta save his friends lives or he is gotta save his own life and so it's just

fight or flight. If he had to sit down and think about

"Would I really face a dragon?" no way he'd do it. "Would I kill 20-foot spiders?", no way.

He wouldn't want to go through the barrel

escape either, no one would.

You might drown at any second so it's just all out of

spur-of-the-moment decisions for him and that's the best way that you

I think as an audience member you see change gradually and you see it

in the moment as opposed to something the filmmakers have cheated

and they come back and now he's a hero everyone we just telling you he's a hero

well why? Let's see why he is a hero.

It was great to film, I didn't film it with Ben.

It took a long time to film, over many months actually

I last was doing bits on in the summer

in July and I first worked on how many decades ago and is great,

great scene, I love it and Ben brings a fantastic aspect to that voice.

He did the whole physical performance in a

performance capture suit, but given that he's not two hundred feet tall

and is not the shape of a dragon is only so much you can kind of do with that but

yeah he brings a fantastic vocal quality to it, which he has a great

range, especially that lower registry he has is really good.

Very right for Smaug.