John Rhys-Davies is something of an anomaly in Hollywood, and it's not just because he's British. Rhys-Davies would be something of an anomaly wherever he was, I think. It's entirely possible, too, that the persona he presents in interviews is somewhat manufactured; but if so, at the very least he delivers a consistent performance—much more so than many actors deliver on film, and one the press seems to like.

One thing is clear enough when you speak to Rhys-Davies—he's a conservative. And there's really no moderation to him. He's a fan of what has been called "Dead White Male" culture, and he is not the least bit abashed admitting it. He doesn't masquerade as a moderate to suit the tolerance level of the free-thinkers and liberals who usually populate artistic endeavors. If he's a wolf in their fold, he at least walks straight in, decked out in full wolf paraphernalia.

In New York, prior to the release of The Two Towers, Rhys-Davies met with the religious press for round-table interviews. In those sessions, he threw down the gauntlet, as he usually does, directing the esoteric questions of the press in what he deemed were more practical directions. For instance, he volunteered the observation that "evil is a very unfashionable thing to talk about in our time—it makes us squirm." Taking the themes of The Two Towers and applying them to the world at large, he said that "unity, courage and a willingness to sacrifice" are needed in times such as ours—times, he thinks, when "there comes a challenge to a generation where you can lose it all—your way of life, your civilization." This, of course, is of primary concern to a conservative; and, just as obviously, a source of some amusement to the liberal who is only interested in retaining what is perceived as the best of a culture, while gladly jettisoning the rest.

Rhys-Davies sees great value in outmoded ways of thinking, in dead cultural norms. In this respect, he is probably not terribly unlike Tolkien himself, who would agree with Rhys-Davies' adjuration that "we must aspire to the king who has yet to come into his place... We should aspire to be kings."

The veteran actor is also forthcoming with his opinions about God, and the existence of God. Unlike most of his colleagues—who will rather tolerantly nod to the very non-specific notion of a "higher power," whatever that may mean—Rhys-Davies will jocularly recount feigned conversations with God, as when he was seriously injured in late 2002 by a set's wall falling upon him. The incident, he said, convinced him that God "will deal with us all, in the end—and he's got the time."

In Los Angeles several weeks ago, Rhys-Davies was more than happy to pick up some of the themes from last year's interviews, and to amplify them somewhat—if indifferent about actually discussing The Return of the King. What follows is a transcript of another round-table with the religious press, in which I participated. The questions are posed by press from a variety of publications, and Rhys-Davies' responses are given verbatim. Where necessary, extraneous or unintelligible remarks are indicated by bracketed ellipses, so: [...].

Are you feeling better than last year?

Well, I am. They actually discovered last week that I broke my back, as well. But I am not a quadriplegic, and I am all better. As my daddy used to say, every day above the ground is a good day.

Kind of a follow-up question from the interview you did with this group last year: You made a remark that evil is a very unfashionable thing to talk about, in our time—it "makes us squirm." What about the knottier question of sin? How do you see that playing out in the story of The Return of the King?

I rather suspect that we'll all be reading from the same page, in this room. But the older I get, the more certain I am of the presence of evil, and sometimes I—no, that's not true. I do believe in the existence of good—manifest good. I've seen it, and it's palpable. But there is... I was musing the other day—you better not use this as an example—I was just musing the other day on someone who was an acquaintance of mine, who was urging us to be supportive of the AIDS thing, and just musing on the fact that, you know, that he openly and publicly advocates a lifestyle which increases the risk of AIDS to all who engage in it. There seemed to be no sense of the irony of that, the contradiction of that, or the... You know what? If I started wearing ribbons, there would be one for Cassie Brosnan on it—ovarian cancer. And one for an old love of mine who died from every form of cancer possible. There'd be one for a son of mine who died because he had a malformed heart. There would be strings for those guys who—like all of us in this room, damn it—who, if we live long enough, will die of prostate cancer. But if you take all those things away, in the end we all die. As Tom Stoppard says, it isn't as though the alternative is immortality. But for most of us, well—let me put it this way. How—oh, dear God— All I'm saying is, there aren't many diseases where a moral decision could actually end a plague. You know, it's really very simple. I mean with AIDS, you know... We are living in an age of entitlements, we have no responsibilities. I'm reading this wonderful book by a guy named [Victor]David Hanson, called, The Other Greeks, really about the origins of democracy in agrarian responsibility. And we detach—if we detach ourselves—from the responsibility we have no civilization. I mean, if this book is about anything, if The Lord of the Rings is about anything, I suppose it comes out of Tolkien's experience in World War One, where the British Army—he was a Captain in the British Army in the battle of the Somme— Let me put your losses in Iraq into perspective. In the first battle of the Somme, the British army took 100,000 casualties, 20,000 deaths. Let me put your losses in Iraq in perspective again. I think in the two days after the Chinese entered the Korean War, the United States Army had taken 7,000 dead. I think that Tolkien was basically saying, you know, there are times when a generation may be challenged. And if that generation does not rise to meet that challenge, you could lose an entire civilization. And I think that has a huge resonance for today.

So what is this generation's challenge?

[Rhys-Davies at least feigns distress at being pressed for more details, and utters an expletive, here deleted.] Excuse me ma'am. Forgive me, forgive me. What's happening in Europe is a catastrophe for civilization. The demographic of Europe is changing so radically. Do you realize that at the end of the century, if present trends continue, there will be 56%—the population of Germany will be 56% of what it is now; the population of France will be 52% of what it is now; the population of Italy will be down to 7 million. Spain... There are 40 million Muslims in Europe. By 2020, 50% of the people born in Holland—under the age of 18 in Holland—will be Muslim. Now, you don't want to sound racist when you talk about these things, but there has to be a cultural implication... and this is a catastrophe. I believe in Judeo-Greek-Christian Western civilization. It has given us democracy, it has given us the equality of women, it has given us the abolition of slavery, it has given us the right to true intellectual dissent. And if we lose that, the world is unalterably diminished. And what will happen, I think, in the end, is that we will start polarizing in the old and vicious ways. That is why I have to tell you I am so behind what the Americans are trying to do in Iraq; it is an extraordinary thing. You're the most optimistic people in the damn world. No one really believed in Germany after the Second World War, or in Japan. Have you read that book, Flyboys? Do read it. It's about the guy that wrote that thing about Iwo Jima, you know, the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima. And it's basically about those guys... [...] It's extraordinary, you would not believe it. What I'm basically saying is that no one believed at the end of the Second World War that you could democratize Germany or Japan; and the Americans did it. And what you're trying to do in Iraq is to say, "Look, we might be able to take a medieval—I mean, pre-medieval—culture, and turn it into a thriving, Western democracy with a vested interest in life before death."

John, everything you're telling us is kind of unusual to hear from a filmmaker, this perspective. Usually we get a different direction.

I take a lot of stick for it. I have to shut up about it. You have no idea of the strength of ostracization. But in truth, you know... [...] Our culture is so rich, and the benefits of our civilization are so great. And if we lose it, the world would be—you know, the age of the Orcs and the Uruk-hai will be upon us.

Do you think that is part of why, in the Rings, there is this denial of evil, in terms of the Ring's power? When they're reaching for that, they're assuming they won't be corrupted. Today—I'm sorry to go back to Iraq—you're saying that our denial of evil is a parallel there, and that it's part of the result of an unwillingness to engage, and defend that democracy?

Your unwillingness to defend what you're doing in Iraq has got, certainly, to do with partisan political things. I actually believe that the American people actually fully understand what they're doing, and why they're doing it, and are behind the doing of it. Besides which, the right of a pre-emptive strike has to be preserved. I mean literally, they can come into Long Beach, and they can effectively destroy life in the city for a thousand years... [...] What you're doing in Iraq is being denied by people who don't actually understand, who'll actually sacrifice important principles for very short-term gains and goals.

Is Gimli the role you wanted?

No, really, I was very skeptical of the whole thing. Because, to be perfectly honest with you, I'd been around on a lot of pictures, and I know what it means to make a picture on this sort of scale. And I didn't think Peter Jackson had it, and I didn't think that New Zealand had it. And when I went to New Zealand, there was duplicity in my heart. I mean, my agent said to me, "If you turn down this part, I don't think we can continue to represent you." And I knew I was heading for a long time of pain and discomfort, and if you get one film and two direct-to-videos and you've given up three years of your life to do it...

You brought up a great point before that it's a lot harder to believe in the good, the older you get and the more life experience you have—with people dying and all the crazy stuff in the world. Did you find being in this film helpful in reminding you of some of the positive things?

Yes, indeed. For instance, the behavior of my fellow actors was exemplary. The ability of Jackson to organize, and focus and control literally tens of thousands of people—you reckon twenty thousand, twenty-three thousand people have been involved in these films. I mean, it's a pretty monumental thing. [...] You're either faithful to the books, or to filmmaking 101. It's to Jackson's credit that he's always faithful to the books.

Legolas and Gimli—Elves and Dwarves... to me, that's a good metaphor for today's world: appreciating someone else's culture, respecting it.

And one should be able to respect that. The problem that the liberal imagination has, is that it has no way of coming to terms with the implacability of those peoples. The ex-head of Hamas—did you see that thing he said? He said, "You do not understand. There's nothing that you can give us that we want. We want to simply eliminate you." Now we—we all go, "Now, I realize I must have upset you. The fault must have been mine. Explain to me where I've gone wrong, and surely—we're reasonable people, we can sit down, we can come to an accommodation." What you cannot understand, at times you simply have to say, here's the thing: Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism—these are not founded in conflict. But right from the word go, there is in Islam a level of compulsion to violence. Didn't he get kicked out of Mecca, and forced to live in Medina? Or was it the other way around? They can't earn their living any more; they're traders. [...] I've read The Koran. And he has them organized into armed bands, to prey upon the camel trains... Right from the word go, there is violence and compulsion in that religion. I do not see it as a religion of peace. I see it as— I do not see how you can... The syllogism: everything that the prophet said was dictated by God; therefore nothing the prophet said can be controverted by man. And the prophet did say it is the duty of the good Muslim to kill or convert the unbeliever. How you can reconcile that with the Western democrat in a liberal society— It seems to me to be an awful burden to bear, when you're a Muslim. And the truth of the matter is that each generation defines itself by what its fathers—well, by what it opposes in its fathers' beliefs. And that is why fundamentalism will be reborn with each generation, from people who try to accommodate, who try to be Westernized.

Have you called your agent[s] and told them they were right?

Interesting; that agent actually got fired. He actually—in a characteristic Hollywood way, he went in ten days before Christmas, and they called him into a meeting and said, "We've just decided to sack you." Wasn't even given time to take his files. He was escorted back to the desk and out of the building.

Can I ask a Tolkien question?

Please.

I've been asking this question of several people and I'd like your take. Who destroys the Ring?

I think Frodo. I think Frodo, even though it's obviously Gollum himself... Gollum and Frodo between them actually destroy the Ring. But I think the—I think it was Frodo.

Did you form some lasting relationships? I mean, it's been grueling, and you guys have been together for three years. Are these people that you adore and cherish?

I urge all your readers to go and visit New Zealand. They're lovely people and it's a beautiful country. They really took us to their hearts. They had no idea what they were getting into. And now that they've woken up to it—and at last their recognition is, "Wow, everybody knows we're New Zealanders!" And, "Ah! We've got a major director here." Basically, as a person, I hate all those people who seek to unravel the knots that tie people, that seek to break the knot between Britain and America, that seek to break the knot between Britain and New Zealand, Australia and things like that. We will all, one day, need the old ties again, and do not ever dismantle them. Now, they have a lady there who actually unilaterally decided that knighthoods were un-New Zealand. So I'd been very deliberately manipulating every interview I did in New Zealand to say, "You've got to get Peter Jackson a knighthood!" We've abolished knighthoods. "Well, abolish the abolition!"

Jeffrey Overstreet, at Looking Closer, offers a transcript from another interview with Rhys-Davies, conducted on the same day.