Dominic Monaghan

Dominic Monaghan is a British actor who shot to fame with his role as a hobbit in the movie adaptations of Lord of the Rings, (2001–2003). His role in the British television drama Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, (1996), began his acting career. He played the role of the electricity-generating Bolt in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, (2009), Charlie Pace in ABC’s mysterious TV series, Lost, (2004–2010) and was in Soldiers of Fortune, (2012). As a big fan of reptiles and spiders he has travelled all over the world in search of them in the TV series, Wild Things with Dominic Monaghan (2012–2013).

Dominic Monaghan was perfect for the part of Nockman. He didn’t look like Nockman in the book (who is fat, half bald with greasy hair and who has a goatee beard) but he was able to be both sinister and pathetic, menacing and at the same time, comical. So often on set he had everyone laughing. He is a brilliant comic actor.

We discovered that Dominic has a love of spiders and reptiles. (In fact he did a show for the BBC called ‘Wild Things’. I thought it would be great to suddenly make the character Nockman have a pet lizard. Then I discovered it would cost too much money – films run on a budget you see, so sadly the lizard and its wrangler (the name you give to the person who looks after animals on film sets) was out of reach.

One of my only regrets in the film was that we didn’t manage to get Nockman a lizard. My other regret was a visual effects one. I really, really, really wanted the sewage pit that Nockman has to slop out, to be more pooey. I really, really wanted to get a couple of visual effect poos done to float around Nockman so that it was even funnier, but it turned out that visual effects poos were going to be really expensive.

I am so grateful for the effort and brilliance Dominic put into the film. He really made Nockman one of the best parts of the movie. Thank you Dominic!