David Bowie DID audition for Lord of the Rings reveals Dominic Monaghan
"I'm assuming he read for Gandalf," says the star, who spotted Bowie at a casting during his own audition
Turns out those whispers were true... David Bowie really did audition for a part in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy – although not necessarily the role you might think...
It always made sense that Bowie should be considered for the fantasy trilogy, after all he practically is an elf. With a couple of costume tweaks he could have stepped straight out of his role as Labyrinth's Goblin King and into that of, say, Elrond, the Elven Lord of Rivendell.
But Dominic Monaghan, who has revealed he spotted Bowie at a casting during his own (successful) audition for the role of Hobbit Merry, thinks the singer could instead have been going for Ian McKellen's role of Gandalf the wizard...
"I was at the Hubbard's, which is a pretty notorious casting agency office in London, doing an audition for Lord of the Rings," Monaghan told the Huffington Post. "And when it ended I went over and talked to John Hubbard, who was running the audition, and he said, 'Hey, it went really well. You should wait around for 5 or 10 mins. We'll give you some feedback'.
"I thought, 'Oh, OK, cool, and I sat in the reception office. As I was reading a magazine waiting, David Bowie came in and signed his little list and went in. And I'm assuming he read for Gandalf. I can't think of anything else he would've read for. He may have read for something else, but I'm a huge David Bowie fan, and I was lucky enough to know his son now so just seeing him in person was pretty special to me."
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We may never know why Bowie didn't get the part, but we kind of suspect it's because his innate brand of magic would have made the rest of the cast look a little mundane in comparison...
