Kate Winslet in talks for Gollum film.
Actor Kate Winslet in talks to star in Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.
The script arrived at 7 a.m., tucked inside a plain brown envelope with no return address. My assistant placed it on the kitchen counter beside my tea, and for a long moment, I just stared at it. “The Hunt for Gollum.” The words felt impossible, like something from a dream I’d forgotten I was having.
My name is Kate, and I am 50 years old. I have two children, a husband who makes me laugh, and a career that has taken me to the bottom of the ocean and the top of Pandora’s floating mountains. But right now, standing in my Los Angeles kitchen in yesterday’s yoga pants, I am 19 again. I am in New Zealand. I am making “Heavenly Creatures” with a wild-haired director named Peter Jackson who doesn’t yet know he will change cinema forever.
Thirty-three years. That’s how long it’s been since Peter and I made that film together. I was a teenager then, all awkward angles and desperate ambition, convinced that every job would be my last. Peter was just Peter—disheveled, passionate, utterly certain that the small, dark story we were telling mattered. We shot in Wellington, in places that felt like another world, and when it was over, I flew home and waited for my life to begin.
Now the phone rings, and it’s him.
“Kate,” he says, and his voice is exactly the same, that New Zealand accent I haven’t heard in person for decades. “I have a question for you.”
I know what he’s going to ask before he asks it. The rumors have been circling for weeks. But hearing it from Peter is different. Hearing it from Peter is coming home.
“There’s a role,” he says. “In Middle-earth. It’s small, but it’s vital. And I thought of you.”
I think of Andy Serkis, contorting his body into something ancient and pitiful and terrifying. I think of Elijah Wood, whose Frodo carried a generation through darkness. I think of Ian McKellen, who made Gandalf feel like everyone’s favorite grandfather.
I think of New Zealand. The green of it, the impossible green, the way the light falls differently there than anywhere else on earth.
“I’m in,” I say.
Peter laughs. “You don’t even know what it is yet.”
“Don’t care.”
My son comes downstairs, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Who was that, Mum?”
“Peter Jackson,” I say, and his eyebrows shoot up. He’s 21, old enough to understand what this means, young enough to still be impressed.
“The Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson?”
“The same.”
He pours himself cereal, watching me. “Are you going to be in it?”
“I think so. Yes.”
“That’s mental,” he says, but he’s smiling. “You’re going to be in Middle-earth. My mum.”
I think about what that means. My son read “The Hobbit” when he was twelve, cover to cover in three days. My daughter dressed as an elf for three consecutive Halloweens. Now they’ll watch me walk through that world, and something will close, a circle I didn’t know needed closing.
Andy Serkis calls to welcome me. “Gollum is exhausting,” he says, laughing. “But also freeing. You’ll see. There’s something about this place, this story. It gets in your blood.”
I believe him. I felt it with “Titanic,” the way that ship became a part of me. I felt it with “Avatar,” the impossible blue of Pandora. But Middle-earth is different. Middle-earth is older. Middle-earth belongs to everyone who has ever opened a book and disappeared.
My daughter calls from university. “Mum, is it true?”
“It’s true.”
“Oh my god. You have to sneak me onto set.”
I laugh. “I’ll try.”
“No, you have to. This is the most important thing that’s ever happened.”
I want to tell her that the most important thing is her, is her brother, is the life we’ve built together. But I understand what she means. Stories matter. The worlds we build matter.
The brown envelope sits on my counter all day. I don’t throw it away. I don’t file it. I just let it be there, a reminder that some circles close slowly, and some doors open when you least expect them, and sometimes, just sometimes, you get to go home.