For latest role, the eyes did it

With his spiky hair, elfin sideburns and all-but-transparent complexion, Elijah Wood looks like a refugee from Middle-earth. But in the two years since he last appeared as Frodo Baggins in Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movies, he's been many other people.

Now 24, he followed up the trilogy by playing a memory-loss technician in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," a sadistic cannibal in "Sin City," a disgraced Harvard student who joins a British fight club in "Green Street Hooligans," and an American-Jewish vegetarian who visits the Ukraine in "Everything Is Illuminated."

He's playing the voice of a penguin in "Happy Feet," a new animated musical from "Babe's" creator, George Miller, and he hopes to appear in Emilio Estevez's "Bobby," about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

While he still calls Los Angeles home, his movie assignments have taken him to Prague, Czech Republic; London; Vancouver, B.C.; Australia; New Zealand; and even Seattle (where he filmed "Child in the Night" in 1990).

"It's hard to find movies that actually film in L.A. these days," he said during a Seattle visit, shortly before taking "Everything Is Illuminated" to the Venice and Toronto film festivals (it opens here Friday). Based on a semi-autobiographical 2002 novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, it was shot in Prague and marks the writing-directing debut of veteran actor Liev Schreiber, who starred in the remake of "The Manchurian Candidate."

"I didn't know Foer's book, but I loved the script, I loved the story, and the character of Jonathan, this kind of neurotic, socially uncomfortable character," said Wood. "The exchanges between him and the other characters were so endearing and funny."

After a two-hour meeting with Schreiber, who claims he cast Wood because he couldn't think of anyone in show business with more expressive eyes, Wood was sold on making the movie. The other roles are played by unknowns, including gypsy-punk-rock musician Eugene Hutz as Jonathan's irrepressible Ukrainian translator and guide Alex, whose twisted English and obsessions with American pop culture provide much of the humor.

"Eugene and I are very different in a lot of ways, so it wasn't that difficult to establish our differences in the film," said Wood. "When Liev met him, he realized quite quickly that he embodied quite a lot of the character of Alex. In fact, I believe Eugene himself said 'I am that guy' in that meeting. I believe he'd done some regional theater, but he'd never been in a film before."

Schreiber had been writing a similar story about his grandfather when he read an excerpt from Foer's book in The New Yorker. He decided that Foer's version was funnier, so he put his own story aside and adapted Foer's.

About a month into shooting, Foer showed up on the set and stayed around for a few days. Wood said he wasn't intimidated because he wasn't really playing Foer: "The character is based on him, but it was Liev's interpretation."

Watching a fellow actor direct for the first time was "an education" for Wood. Indeed, he'd like to direct at some point: "I feel that for the past 16 years, I've been going to film school."

It's been that long since he made his debut, in a minor role in "Back to the Future II," and he's demonstrated a Teflon-like ability to survive expensive turkeys ("Radio Flyer," "North") as well as offbeat films that played to small audiences ("The Ice Storm," "The Good Son"). He's played Huck Finn and the Artful Dodger, he helped revive Flipper's career, and he's appeared in several straight-to-video movies ("Chain of Fools," which he made just before his New Zealand adventure, is one of his faves).

Wood can't imagine what his career would have been like if he hadn't played Frodo. He was 18 when he first visited New Zealand, and it was "an important time in my life. I was living on my own and establishing my own life, and I made the greatest friends in my life." He also wonders if he could have handled the "Lord of the Rings" experience at a younger age.

"I started when I was 8 years old, and I was never massively famous immediately," he said. "I had an incredible mother, and a solid base to go home to. I was never locked into a huge film when I was 10 or 11, I was never genre-specific, I was never strictly kid-oriented. That's the best explanation I can come up with."

Here's another: a contagious passion for his profession that he couldn't stifle if he wanted to.

When he flew to Australia to put in a couple of days' work on "Happy Feet," he couldn't resist stopping by New Zealand to check out Jackson's latest epic, "King Kong." He walked on the set, unannounced, and found the same "Lord of the Rings" crew of technicians working on the new picture.

"I saw about 20 minutes of it," he said, his eyes opening wide. "The movie's going to be amazing."

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com