A nameless member

Trivia: Made for just $7m, but that was a thousand times more than the budget for El Mariachi.

Trivia: Patrick Stewart and Sean Connery both declined the role of Gandalf.

Trivia: Gollum's appearance in this film is different from the other two in the trilogy, as an earlier design was used due to scheduling issues. Partly for this reason he's only seen in brief glimpses. Peter Jackson has joked that he might create a "Special Edition" in the future and fix the discrepancy.

Trivia: Bilbo's birthday cake really had 111 candles on it. The cake was polystyrene, and eventually caught fire because of them.

Trivia: The leaves falling during the Council of Elrond were real leaves, collected during the autumn before filming, and then repainted because being dead they'd gone brown.

Trivia: Orlando Bloom auditioned for Faramir, but instead won the larger role of Legolas.

Trivia: When Bilbo drops the ring, a magnetic ring and floor were used to stop it from bouncing, emphasising its weight and significance.

Trivia: The puppet used for physical shots of Treebeard was 14 feet tall.

Trivia: Edoras' filming location was a national park. They could only film there under the condition it was left exactly as they found it. As such a lot of the natural vegetation had to be carefully removed and stored for the 16 months of filming, then replaced.

Trivia: The raw fish Gollum eats was in reality a fish shaped lollipop.

Trivia: Sam's line in Osgiliath "By rights, we shouldn't even be here" is a deliberate acknowledgement of the fact that in the book they never go there.

Trivia: Andy Serkis' role as Gollum was initially intended to be 3 weeks of voice over work. Peter Jackson was so impressed he then used Serkis' physical performance too.

Trivia: To limit the danger to horses and riders, a horse was fitted with a motion capture suit like that used by Andy Serkis as Gollum and various activities were stored digitally, to be inserted into battle sequences with CGI.

Trivia: To make the inside of the Orcs' mouths black, the actors playing them used a liquorice mouthwash just before filming.

Trivia: Faramir's exit from Minas Tirith is downhill on brick, and steel horseshoes proved to be too slippery. All the horses had to be reshod with rubber.

Trivia: Only the second movie to earn more than a billion dollars at the box office, after Titanic.

Trivia: Only one real beacon was used for the lighting of the beacons - it was flown up to a mountain peak by helicopter.

Trivia: The helmet worn by Miranda Otto proved a challenge to design. Unlike the book, where her real identity is a surprise to the reader, the filmmakers realised there was no way to fully conceal this from the audience (or Merry). As such they needed a helmet which hid enough of her face that she would be believably disguised from everyone, but exposed it enough that the viewer could identify her clearly.

Trivia: The film was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won them all, setting a new record for winning every award it was nominated for. Before that the largest "clean sweep" was The Last Emperor, which was nominated for and won 9 Oscars.

Trivia: Elijah Wood and Sean Astin filmed their climb up Mount Doom on an actual volcano - Ruapehu. They had to be hooked up to wires because it was so steep that slipping would have resulted in a significant drop.