If the timing were different, there's a distinct possibility Peter Jackson's epic Lord of the Rings trilogy may not have had such a momentous box office debut, says one of its key cast members Sean Astin.
Astin, who played loyal hobbit Samwise Gamgee, said episode one, The Fellowship of the Ring, hit screens just two short months after the devastating September 11 terrorist attacks on America.
"As it turned out the Lord of the Rings became this fantastic fantasy experience that the world could disappear into after living with two months of horrorshow news stories," Astin said. "If it happened the day before nobody would have seen it. You never know how something is going to be received."
Hearing Astin speak about the trilogy makes it nearly impossible to believe it's been more than 15 years since it's 2001 release, such is his passion.
He says he knew it was going to be special from the moment he heard news it was going into production.
"I remember my agent calling and saying, 'Sean, Peter Jackson is doing the Lord of the Rings trilogy for Newline', and that sentence was like ... 'they're doing three - wait!'," Astin said.
"Usually the first one comes out and then the second one and then years go by and then maybe they do a third one. They were doing them all at the same time, they must know that it's massive.
"Then I went to the book store and I saw Lord of the Rings and all the versions of it and the illustrations and went, 'oh my gosh', and then you go down to New Zealand and see all the special effects. Just the costumes that they made for the Orcs. There was like 300 rubber costumes and the masks. You just knew that at every level, from top to bottom, that world class experts were coming in to do the best work of their lives. It was pretty instantaneous."
Despite knowing how special the finished product was going to be, Astin says there was still nervousness in the lead-up to the film's release.
"You know that it's brilliant because you can see it, but in terms of it actually going out into the world and connecting with an audience," mused Astin.
"People tell me, they'd wait all year round for their friends to come back from the war or for their kids to come home from college and they would go and see it on Christmas Day, that was part of their family tradition - that's like, 'hey, we're part of people's family traditions', that's pretty amazing."
Astin considers himself blessed to have played the Samwise role.
"I think I really didn't understand it," he said, "I mean I knew it was special. I had just graduated from UCLA studying English and History - a double major - and one of things to recurs through classic literature is the gardener; the nature of the gardener as an important archetype ... just to have your hands in the soil and till your own garden.
"There's something very special about what that means. It's life sustaining, life giving. I knew something was great when I realised as I was reading, this guy is of the soil, he's a gardener. And then as it goes forward what's depicted is a true friend. Words go by so fast now with Twitter and social media and the world. Everybody can type out a 2000 word essay without even thinking about it, but true friend, those two words when you put them together, they actually mean something. And just decency. We live in a world where it is sometimes hard to remember that there is decency out there. He's one of the great literary characters of all time and I just can't believe that I got to do it."
Due for the most part to his place in Lord of the Rings cinematic history, Astin finds himself a mainstay of the pop culture convention scene. Fans of the franchise are keen to hear his stories from the set.
"People just want to know what it was like," he said. "They just want to hear from somebody who was a part of it to validate the experience.
"A lot of the people at the conventions have watched all of the DVD extras, the behind the scenes stuff, all the interviews we've done and at a certain point you've told the stories, you've shared the experience, but now that you're in-person people can touch it and they just want personal stories from the journey and just to know that it was real, and it was, so we have lots of stories to share."
Another of Astin's roles fans enjoy discussing is his portrayal of Mikey Walsh in 1985 adventure flick The Goonies.
A young Astin, served as the leader of a bunch of friends in search of the treasure of pirate One-Eyed Willy.
The film, which was penned by Steven Spielberg and directed by Richard Donner, was a hit world over and is still fondly thought of by its original fans.
"I think there is a spirit of fun in it that really can't be engineered," Astin said of the movie.
"There's mistakes in it - all through the movie - things that you wouldn't ever see in a movie today ... people calling each other by the wrong name; the octopus scene is referred to - there's no octopus scene in the movie.
"It's just one of those things where there was this spirit of play and a sense of fun in the way that it was made. Maybe one of the reasons that a sequel hasn't been made is because it's hard to capture that same whimsy, not just in terms of the tone of the movie, but just how it got made.
"People always come up to me and say that movie - and the way they phrase it is the same every time - they say, 'that movie was my childhood'. All you have to do is hear the first couple of bars of the musical score by Dave Grusin and all of a sudden you're transported to 1985. It's a time capsule."
Astin, who has been acting since childhood, says that despite being privy to what goes on behind the scenes, films certainly offered him the same excitement and magic moments as those viewing his work.
"I play Raphael in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [current animated series], and parents will look down to their four-year-old kid and say, 'look there's Raphael', and the kids look at this 45-year-old man and then they look at their parents as if, 'have they lost their mind, what are you telling me, I don't understand', and I'll say to them, 'you've got to be cool man, you've got to build a bridge for them'. Usually, if they do it successfully, they totally ruin cartoons for their kids.
"Yet at the same time, if you teach a kid how to do a magic trick it makes it so much more fun. Yeah, they learn how to do the trick but then they can't wait to go to their parents or their friends and family and go, 'hey pick a card, any card'.
"So for us, they built a pirate ship on the set. So yeah, we could see the other side that it was a set, but it was still a pirate ship .. you'd have to be a pretty cynical person to not disappear into the adventure of making The Goonies."
Astin said he enjoyed attending conventions. Unlike many other performers, screen actors and voice actors don't generally get to meet their audience.
"For 20 years of making movies I was making them for myself," he said. "If I thought that take was good or that wardrobe was good it was because it was what I would want to see. After Lord of the Rings and starting to do these conventions I really started to get in touch with the fact that, 'oh wait, there really is such a thing as an audience that's out there; they're real'.
"There's something about when people appreciate what you do and that keeps getting fed back to you. Acting is a narcissistic endeavor so it probably makes it a lot worse to go to these conventions and have people compliment you for three days straight."
Astin will serve as one of the stars during the Sydney leg of the Supanova Pop Culture Expo, held at Sydney Showground, Olympic Park on June 17 to 19.
For full event details visit the official website here.