Brooding Lord Of The Rings hero Viggo Mortensen almost got thrown out of a trendy Wellington bar, jokes were played off-set with duct tape, rotting fish and fake excrement, and Liv Tyler liked to show off her push-up bra.

Those were just a few of the antics the young male stars of the movie revealed yesterday.

British actor Orlando Bloom, who plays elf warrior Legolas, said he was so awestruck with Tyler's beauty that he was quick to take up her suggestion of sporting a mohawk. "I was having my make-up done when she arrived and my hairline (was) raised to give me an elven featured face. She said, 'Why don't you shave it off at the sides? You'd really look cute in a mohawk.' I had a mohawk for 18 months."

"I saw her boobs once," Dominic Monaghan, who plays hobbit Merry, said.

"She had like a push-up bra on, man. I said, 'Liv, your boobs look huge' and she said, 'No baby, it's just a push-up bra' and pulled her top up."

Tyler plays the elf Arwen and is Mortensen's love interest in the film.

What about Kiwi women, how different were they? "I think they're funkier," Monaghan said.

"Billy (Boyd) could answer that one. Just go and get the girl," joked Bloom.

"I think . . . people are people," replied an embarrassed Boyd (the hobbit Pippin).

Bloom, in his first major movie role, said there was a friendly off-the-set rivalry between the younger stars and American actor Mortensen. They would play practical jokes on each other.

Mortensen, who plays the human Aragorn, got his son to cover Bloom's trailer in duct tape. In revenge, rotten fish "and a pile of fake shit" were left in Mortensen's trailer, Bloom said.

From Waikato Times | December 22, 2001