John Rhys-Davies Net Worth

John Rhys-Davies's Quotes

• I'd love to spend more time on the Isle of Man. I love the anonymity of putting on a boiler suit and going down to buy parts for the compressor. And Norman Wisdom's a neighbour; I salute him occasionally.
• On a 4th Indiana Jones - "Every three or four years the rumours start again, but any new script has got to be approved by Steven, and by George, and by Harrison. Everyone would like to do one, but the script has got to be better than the other three. Every year Paramount must send boxes of goodies to all three, saying 'please please please make us another one.....'"
• One of my abiding memories is being halfway up a mountain and watching two men carrying a basket with my clothes up to me, and another two carrying my armour and axe, then a woman carrying my helmet up, and finally another with my big, heavy boots to give that dwarfish trouser-look. Then they put it all on me and the director said 'now run up that hill'. - on shooting Fellowship of The Ring
• On why he left Sliders (1995): I like SF. I love intelligent SF. We had the most wonderful series concept with "Sliders", but we did everything that had been done before and we did it every damned episode. We did Species (1995). We did Tremors (1990). We did Twister (1996). We did War of the Worlds (2005). We did The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996). It was out of control, just out of control. In the end, "Sliders" wasn't the worst experience I ever had. I was just disappointed. Again, I love SF. I'm a passionate believer in "Sliders". The series could have been great. The public always understood that of "Sliders". The public understood that you could go anywhere in the galaxy. The writers, though, would try to graft a Law & Order (1990) story, or something they had done or seen before, onto "Sliders" and just make the characters work around it.
• Every time I meet little boys and girls I do get asked about Sallah. Generally, the line is, "Can we have 10 or 15 of your autographs to trade at school?" Even 10 or 15 of mine are not really enough to get one Harrison Ford. But I enjoy acting. It's not that I begin to think I'm getting better. I now fully know that I've made no improvement whatsoever since I was 20. I can live with it.

Interesting Facts about John Rhys-Davies

1. He spent up to 5 hours a day putting on makeup for the role of Gimli in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was discovered early on that he was allergic to the prosthetics, so he could only put them on and work about every third day. The first week, it burned off the skin under his eyes. After filming was completed he was given the appliance used and told to do what he wanted with it. One of the makeup artists claimed they had never seen him move so fast as he threw it into a nearby fire.
2. His son urged him to accept the role in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001).
3. Keeps busy by developing a new hobby with each movie.
4. Lost the end tip of his left hand middle finger to the knuckle while changing a van engine. During filming of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), he was fitted with a gel tip for the finger. Rhys-Davies and the crew played a prank on director Peter Jackson by slicing the gel tip nearly in half and inserting prop blood inside. Rhys-Davies approached Jackson to tell him he was hurt and pulled open the tip, letting the blood flow out.
5. Ironically, he is actually taller than The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) co-stars Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom and Ian McKellen, yet he plays the Dwarf.
6. According to an article in the Sunday Herald Sun (Melbourne, Australia), December 14, 2003, the actors who played the members of the Fellowship of the Ring got a tattoo as a memento of their shared experiences, except for Rhys-Davies, who sent his stunt double instead. According to the BellaOnline body art website, the double was martial artist Brett Beattie, who in fact spent more film hours performing as Gimli the Dwarf.
7. Two of his television movies have been followed up with similarly themed theatrical films starring Eric Bana. He played "The Kingpin" in The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (1989); the film Hulk (2003) starred Bana. He played "King Priam" in Helen of Troy (2003); Eric Bana played "Hector" in Troy (2004).
8. Before getting the role of Gimli, he auditioned for the role of Denethor. Orlando Bloom, who played Legolas, auditioned for the role of Denethor's other son, Faramir. In Helen of Troy, Rhys-Davies played Priam, and in Troy (2004), Bloom played Paris, Priam's younger son.
9. April 2004 - Appeared as the special Lord of the Rings guest at the Armageddon Sci-Fi and Comics Convention in Auckland, New Zealand.
10. September 2004 - Attended the Armaggeddon Pulp Culture Expo Convention in Wellington, New Zealand as a Lord of the Rings guest
11. Every film he has made with Kiran Shah has been nominated for Best Picture: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).
12. Is one of four "Lord of the Rings" stars to star, pre-"Rings," with Harrison Ford. He starred with Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and Ford starred with Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) in Witness (1985), with Sean Bean (Boromir) in Patriot Games (1992), and with Miranda Otto (Eowyn) in What Lies Beneath (2000).
13. Although a double needed to be used to make Rhys-Davies look much smaller than his shorter co-stars Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloom, his height was exactly the right proportions to those of his hobbit co-stars and no body doubles were used in their shots together. The hobbits are supposed to average about 3' 6" (2 feet shorter than the actors who played them) and Gimli, at just over 4 feet tall, is about 2 feet shorter than the real Rhys-Davies.
14. Graduated from the University of East Anglia. Later attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) , of which he is an Associate Member.
15. Played the character of Malone in the TV Series The Untouchables (1993). The character was played by Sean Connery in the movie version The Untouchables (1987). Both actors also played Richard the Lionheart, King of England, in separate versions of Robin Hood: Rhys-Davis in TV's Robin of Sherwood (1984) and Connery (albeit uncredited) in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991). Connery and Rhys-Davies appeared together in between these projects in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).
16. Parents: Rhys Davies (a mechanical engineer) and Mary Margaretta Phyllis Jones (a nurse).
17. John Rhys Davies and his wife, Suzanne, had two sons, Tom and Ben. He has lived with Lisa Manning since 2004; they have a daughter, Maia. He separated from his wife in the early 1980s; the couple never divorced. Suzanne Davies was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 1995 and died in 2010.
18. While working on the Lord of the Rings films, he lost seventy pounds from all the running around the part involved. When he went back to New Zealand for re-shoots, the makeup artists had to alter his Gimli makeup to better fit his slimmed-down facial features.
19. A supporter of the British Conservative Party, Rhys-Davies was a radical leftist in the '60s, who tried to heckle a young Tory MP. But the parliamentarian "shot down the first two hecklers in such brilliant fashion that I decided I ought for once to shut up and listen". The MP was Margaret Thatcher. He is a supporter of Brexit. On 25 April 2019, he appeared as a panellist on the BBC's Question Time (1979). His conduct on the programme towards politician Caroline Lucas was later described as "thuggish and sexist" by some viewers.
20. Is the only actor to star in the James Bond, Indiana Jones and Lord of the Rings franchises.