The actor, who plays Halbrand in the Lord of the Rings show, talks about auditioning in secret, fleeing sea beasts with Galadriel … and what Tolkien would think about the racist backlash
- This article contains spoilers for the penultimate episode of The Rings of Power
It’s a curious development of the internet age that, when someone becomes very famous very quickly – as Charlie Vickers has – gossip websites rush to gather banal facts about them: where you are born, who you are dating, even how tall you are. And if you’re an actor in one of the biggest shows (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power), playing a lead role (the mysterious Halbrand) while daring to have no social media accounts – as Charlie Vickers has – those sites just start guessing. If you believe everything you read online, Vickers is a 33-year-old British actor who came out of nowhere. “Who is this dark-eyed golden boy?” one website recently asked.
“Oh God,” the dark-eyed golden boy groans. Well, he’s not from Britain, for starters: Vickers is Australian, born in the Melbourne beach suburb of St Kilda in 1992. He grew up in Geelong, where his family moved when he was eight. “But in England they have no idea where Geelong is,” he says, sitting in a London apartment. “So I say Melbourne.”
