Elijah Wood

Elijah Jordan Wood was born on January 28, 1981, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and began performing as a child model and actor. His first film appearance came in Back to the Future Part II (1989), where he briefly appears as a boy in the shopping mall arcade. He gained wider attention as the son of a troubled family in Barry Levinson's Avalon (1990), then played Mike, confronting family trauma after his parents' divorce, in the film Radio Flyer (1992).

Wood became a prominent young performer during the 1990s. In The Good Son (1993), he played Mark Evans, a child who discovers that his cousin Henry (Macaulay Culkin) is dangerously violent. North (1994) cast him as an eleven-year-old who leaves home searching for ideal parents, while The War (1994) placed him in a Mississippi family during World War II. He starred in Flipper (1996) and appeared opposite Sigourney Weaver in The Ice Storm (1997). His later 1990s credits included Deep Impact (1998), a disaster film about an approaching comet, and The Faculty (1998), Robert Rodriguez's science-fiction horror film.

Peter Jackson cast Wood as Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings trilogy: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003). Filmed largely in New Zealand, the trilogy follows Frodo's mission to carry the One Ring to Mount Doom, and made Wood internationally recognizable. He also voiced Mumble in George Miller's animated musical Happy Feet (2006), reprising the role in Happy Feet Two (2011). In Sin City (2005), he played Kevin, a silent, cannibalistic killer, and he portrayed Jonathan Safran Foer in Everything Is Illuminated (2005), adapted from Foer's novel.

Wood moved into television and production as well as continuing film work. He starred as Ryan Newman, a man who believes he is being stalked by an invisible dog, in the darkly comic series Wilfred (2011–2014), adapted from an Australian program. He later played Todd Brotzman in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (2016–2017), based on Douglas Adams's novels. Wood founded the production company SpectreVision with Daniel Noah and Josh C. Waller; the company has produced genre films including Cooties (2014), Mandy (2018), and Color Out of Space (2019).

Wood has also pursued music as a DJ with Zach Cowie under the name Wooden Wisdom, while continuing to act in independent films such as Come to Daddy (2019) and horror cinema.