Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings: Actors, Age and Fate

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit of the Shire and the character who carries the One Ring out of Gollum's cave and into the rest of the saga. He has two screen lives: the quiet homebody who joins Thorin Oakenshield's company in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), directed by Peter Jackson, and the elderly gentleman who gives the Ring to his nephew in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), also directed by Peter Jackson.

Why is Bilbo old in Lord of the Rings? Because the trilogy is set about sixty years after his adventure with the dwarves. An Unexpected Journey itself opens with the older Bilbo writing down the story of his great journey for Frodo to read, so both ages meet inside a single film. On his 111th birthday in The Fellowship of the Ring he leaves home and hands the Ring to Frodo.

The cast lists use more than one name for him. The Fellowship of the Ring credits "Bilbo", the Hobbit films credit "Bilbo Baggins", and a further credit reads "Old Bilbo Baggins". Ian Holm plays him in The Fellowship of the Ring, and Martin Freeman plays the younger Bilbo in all three Hobbit films. If you are deciding where to start, our Lord of the Rings movies in order guide sets out both sequences, and the full list of Lord of the Rings characters shows where he sits among the rest.

Bilbo's closest bonds are with Gandalf, Thorin and Frodo, and his most dangerous acquaintance is Gollum. Each of them shapes a different stretch of his life.

Gandalf chooses him as burglar and later visits him on his 111th birthday, which is the link between the two trilogies. Thorin starts as the leader of the dwarf company and doubts the hobbit, becomes his friend on the Carrock, and in the last film makes peace with him before he dies of his wounds. Thorin Oakenshield is therefore the emotional center of the Hobbit films, with Bilbo as the person who stays behind.

With Gollum the relationship is a single scene with lasting results. Their riddle contest in the dark gives Bilbo the magic ring that Gandalf later identifies as the One Ring. Frodo Baggins is the nephew who inherits the Ring and for whom Bilbo writes his account. Bilbo also faces Smaug in the Lonely Mountain, and he gives the Arkenstone to Thranduil and Bard in an attempt to avoid a war.

Did any of the dwarves ever visit Bilbo? The dwarves travel with him for the whole quest, and Thorin makes his peace with him in the last film. The visit that links the story to The Fellowship of the Ring is Gandalf's, on Bilbo's 111th birthday.

Bilbo's best moments are the ones where a small, unwarlike person gets the better of something enormous. What is Bilbo Baggins' famous line? In the films he is better remembered for a scene than for a single line, and in my opinion that scene is the riddle contest with Gollum in An Unexpected Journey. It is a two person drama in a cave, and it also sets up everything that follows for the Ring.

The second moment is the escape from the spiders in Mirkwood in The Desolation of Smaug. It is the first time the ring is shown to have a darker influence on him, and it could be argued that the sequence works because Bilbo is plainly changed by what the ring lets him do. Third, his decision in The Battle of the Five Armies to give the Arkenstone to Thranduil and Bard is, to my mind, the bravest thing he does, because he acts against Thorin's wishes in order to try to stop a war.

Perhaps the quietest moment is the framing device of the older Bilbo writing for Frodo. It ties the Hobbit films to the trilogy more neatly than any plot point.