Lee Pace reveals how he got into the right mood for Thranduil

New York Daily News has a new article about Evangeline Lilly (Tauriel) and Lee.

To find his Elven King Thranduil, Jackson had to trek even further from Middle Earth — all the way to New York.
After seeing Lee Pace’s turn in 2006’s “The Fall,” the director traveled to the other side of the globe to recruit the Juilliard-educated actor.

They didn’t have to pitch Pace very hard to join a cast that included one of his idols, Sir Ian McKellen, who plays the wizard Gandalf.

“Even when I was in high school drama [class], I would see theater books and there would be pictures of him playing Macbeth opposite Judi Dench,” says Pace. “And I remember looking at them going I wonder what they must be like in person.”

To get into the proper regal mood for his character, Pace would stare at the image of artist Damien Hirst’s famed “For the Love of God” diamond skull sculpture on his iPhone.

By the time Pace’s plane landed in New Zealand, he was ready to assume the throne as the father of Legolas (though Pace, 34, is actually two years younger than Bloom) in “The Desolation of Smaug.”

Pace has called the Big Apple home since he migrated from Texas as a teen.

“I remember being like 17 and I had never been in New York before and I was taking a taxi from LaGuardia down to Lincoln Center where Juilliard is, looking out the window and thinking that it looked like Sesame Street,” he says.
And after a spate of work that took him away from the city for more than a year — including filming Marvel Studios’ upcoming “Guardians of the Galaxy” — Pace is finally home.

What’s the first thing he did upon returning?

“My laundry.”

Full article here.