‘It was bloody hard work’: what it’s like to be a 16ft TV troll

“We had a little bit of difficulty right at the start because: how do you actually play a troll? How do you move?” This is William Kircher, who played Tom, one of the three cave trolls in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Kircher was lucky enough to portray not just Tom; like the other two actors in the troll sequence, he also doubled up as a dwarf in the Hobbit trilogy (and got paid two separate fees for his trouble). But, while his dwarf Bifur was for all intents and purposes just a small man who had never been to the barber, his troll role took a little more thought. “It was bloody hard work,” he says. “There’s no easy way to play a troll.”