Why Stuart Townsend Was Fired As Lord Of The Rings' Aragorn, According To Sean Astin

There are some famous stories that surround the making of Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy. Viggo Mortensen infamously broke his toe kicking a Uruk-hai helmet on set. Sean Bean hated flying and hiked mountains to film on them. And then there's the tale of Irish actor Stuart Townsend, who was recast as Aragorn in a risky move that ended up paying off in spades for Jackson and friends.

The reasoning behind the recasting, according to most reports, is that Townsend was in his late twenties at the time, and he simply looked too young to play the venerable 87-year-old ranger, especially along his more youthful-looking hobbit costars. But Sean Astin (who plays the hero Samwise Gamgee in the movies) had some additional thoughts on the actor's dismissal. In a word (or more like seven words), Astin described Townsend as "a black hole of negative creative energy."

Astin shared his thoughts in his 2004 memoir "There and Back Again: An Actor's Tale." After pointing out that he and his family ached for Stuart's pain at being let go, Astin pointed out that, to a degree, the actor had it coming. During wardrobe fittings, Astin noticed that Townsend was really having trouble settling into the role. He explained:

He just didn't look right, didn't feel right, and he couldn't explain what needed to be done to correct the problem.

"Lord of the Rings" costume designer Ngila Dickson and even Jackson himself tried to help, but they couldn't get anywhere. According to Astin:

Stuart wasn't helping matters. He was a black hole of negative creative energy. I kept wondering why he couldn't just relax and enjoy the process.

Astin elaborated that Townsend's agony was clear to behold. He wasn't enjoying the process. And yet, in all fairness, Astin went out of his way to point out that it was an authentic agony. "You could just see him struggling to figure out the character, and he was so connected to the nature of the struggle that the solution wasn't presenting itself," the actor explained before adding:

There was something about his acknowledgment of the magnitude of the role, which carried with it the promise of making him a major bona fide motion picture star and serious actor for generations. Maybe he just couldn't handle it. Or perhaps Peter determined that Stuart's way of handling the role would have been inconsistent with the spirit of the production.

Either way, in the end, Townsend had to go, and after a scramble, Mortensen was brought in. While everything ended up going swimmingly (for everyone but Townsend), Astin added that, at the time, the shake-up was unnerving. Even if the replacement made sense, the development signaled that job security wasn't a given, even though production had started.

"Job security was not to be taken for granted, and thus a prudent man would know better than to whine too loudly whenever his ego was bruised," the actor concluded.