News The Lord of the Rings Liv Tyler Says Arwen Was Originally Part of the Fellowship in The Lord of the Rings Films “I was in Helm’s Deep, fighting” By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on January 13, 2026 Screenshot: New Line Cinema Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: New Line Cinema It’s been twenty-five years(!) since Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy hit the big screen. To celebrate the occasion, Empire brought together Liv Tyler and Cate Blanchett, who played Arwen and Galadriel respectively in the films, to reminisce about their experiences during production. In the books, Arwen—the elf who ultimately marries Aragorn (played in the movies by Viggo Mortensen)—doesn’t do much. Her role in the films was expanded, but Tyler shared that Arwen initially had an even larger part to play in the story. “Originally, when I came into the project, I was included in the Fellowship,” she said. “I was in Helm’s Deep, fighting.” Tyler actually shot scenes at Helm’s Deep, though those never made it into the final film (many people think, however, that a brief shot of Arwen got through, and point to the person in red in the background at the 4:29 mark in this clip). “I was there with Viggo and everyone,” she said. “It was fucking hard, man. It was brutal. And it didn’t really work. Then it changed again. Over the course of three years, I didn’t always have something to hold on to with the text, so I had to really lean into this idea of unwavering love and groundedness that was the role of Arwen in the story.” Tyler and Blanchett also vaguely recalled a scene they had together as well, though they couldn’t remember the details. “You’d see Viggo [Mortensen] and Pete [Jackson] going to knock off another few shots from the battle sequences, which I was longing to be part of,” Blanchett said. “But it really felt like they were invested in finding a way that the female characters could anchor things, so that even though they weren’t a huge part of the narrative, they weighted the story in quite a profound way.” [end-mark] The post Liv Tyler Says Arwen Was Originally Part of the Fellowship in <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> Films appeared first on Reactor.