Billy Boyd

Glaswegian Billy Boyd got bitten by the acting bug when he was cast as the Artful Dodger in a school production of the stage musical "Oliver!" at age 11. Although encouraged in his pursuit of the arts by his mother (she enrolled him in amateur dramatics at the Dolphin Arts Centre), he opted to train as a bookbinder when he left school just before his 17th birthday. After a four-year apprenticeship and two more years of actual work, Boyd decided the time had come to pursue his dream of acting.

Planning to spend a year in the USA before enrolling in drama school, he learned there were still slots opens at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and went ahead and auditioned. While visiting America, he learned he had been accepted into the three-year diploma program.

After graduating, the boyishly handsome Boyd was one of the lucky ones who immediately found work at the Byre Theatre in St. Andrews, playing the title role in the musical "Secret Diary of Adrian Mole" and later "The Slab Boys." He subsequently appeared at Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum Theatre and the Traverse Theatre in such shows as "Trainspotting," "Widows Alexis" and "An Experienced Woman Gives Advice." A guest appearance as an autistic teenager on the popular Scottish series "Taggart" helped to raise his profile a bit.

He segued to films with supporting roles in "Urban Ghost Story" (1998; released in Great Britain in 2001) and "Julie and the Cadillacs" (1999). Boyd enjoyed his greatest exposure to date when he landed the role of Peregrin 'Pippin' Took, one of the Hobbits who are entrusted with destroying a magical ring before it falls into the wrong hands in the highly anticipated Peter Jackson-directed version of J.R.R. Tolkein's "The Lord of the Rings." Making three films simultaneously over a two-year period in New Zealand, Boyd was among the many of lesser known performers tapped to play the leading roles.

When the first of the trio of movies, "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" opened in December 2001, he found his profile on the rise. Guaranteed exposure over the next two years as the subsequent films -- "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" (2002) and "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003) -- opened, the actor made a surprising career choice by opting to return to his stage roots in the two-hander "The Ballad of Crazy Paola" at the Traverse Theatre. Boyd joined the cast of yet another absorbing, critically hailed adventure film when he took on the supporting role of coxswain Barrett Bonden in director Peter Weir's "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" (2003) opposite Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany.