Scottish actor Billy Boyd, also known as William Nathan Boyd, is best remembered for his role as Peregrin “Pippin” Took in the Lord of the Rings films.
We’ll travel to Middle Earth to find out more about his life and his activities since the TLOTR trilogy’s filming came to an end.
Billy was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on August 28, 1968. When he was a teenager, his parents sadly died within a year of one another.
Billy held a job as a bookbinder prior to pursuing a career in cinema. Before deciding to pursue acting in the middle of the 1990s, he spent six years in this position.
The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama was where he studied. After receiving his degree, he gave performances at the Traverse Theatre and St. Andrew’s Repertory.
Billy obtained his first acting job in 1996, portraying Jamie Holmes in the television series Taggart, shortly after graduating. He appeared in three episodes as a guest.
He played a postman in the 1998 short film The Soldier’s Leap and a loan shark in Urban Ghost Story two years later.
He received several bit parts in 1999, including Julie and the Cadillacs and the TV film Coming Soon.
He wouldn’t get his big break in acting until 2001, when he was cast as Pippin in The Lord of the Rings.
He was 33 years old when he was cast as Peregrin “Pippin” Took in The Fellowship of the Rings in 2001.
In 2003, he played the same part in both The Lord of the Rings: The Two Tower and The Return of the King.
After the trilogy’s filming started, Billy’s career continued. He appeared alongside Russell Crowe in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World in 2003 as Barrett Bonden, Coxswain.
He later played Bill Craig in the 2008 film Stone of Destiny, guest featured in two episodes of The Witches of Oz in 2011, and then took on the same character in the 2011 movie Dorothy and the Witches of Oz.
He made many film appearances between the years of 2012 and 2022, including Walking with Herb, Mara and the Firebringer, and Beyond Metal.
Additionally, he had multiple appearances in the episodes of Outlander, NCIS: Hawai’i, and Sofia the First.
Along with his acting accomplishments, his band, Beecake, also put out an album in 2010 that shot to the top of the MySpace rankings.
The group later went on to take home the Tartan Clef Music Awards’ Best Live Act trophy from VisitScotland. They released two more albums in 2012 and 2013 respectively.
Billy is still quite busy in the acting world. He appeared in a number of movies in 2021, including Walking With Herb, the Loud House Movie, Doom Patrol, Invisible Manners, and an Intrusion.
He joined the cast of the Moriarty: The Devil’s Game podcast in 2022 and will take part in one episode of the Legend of Vox Machina in 2023.
Billy will join Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine and Julian Rhind-Tutt in the Hulu series Washington Black, it was revealed in May 2022.
Washington Black is chased by the television show as he escapes a Barbados sugar plantation in Esi Edugyan’s novel.
Boyd is slated to take on the job of Willard, the person tasked with locating and seizing Black so they may return him to the plantation. There was no additional information available at the time of publication about the limited TV series’ air date.
Boyd reunited with Dominic Monaghan, his co-star from The Lord of the Rings, in 2021 to launch the Friendship Onion. The podcast will go into pop culture and analyze the background and trivia of The Lord of the Rings.
Several of Billy’s former LOTR cast members, including Dominic Monaghan, Sean Astin, and Elijah Wood, reconnected with him in May 2022. Over supper, the group exchanged selfies.
But it wasn’t the only time they got back together. They also made an appearance at the Calgary Expo in the same month. Additionally, Elijah and Sean listened to the Friendship Onion podcast the month before.
Billy frequently attends fan events; the most recent ones were German Comic Con and Steel City Con in December 2022. Dates for 2023 have not yet been made public.
Billy’s personalized video recordings are available to fans on Cameo for $190. Or, if they can arrange to pay $1,300 for a business video. He has a 5-star rating and is quite responsive, according to his Cameo profile.
Billy mentioned that he like the new Lord of the Rings series, Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, in an interview with Syfy.
Billy said he appreciated going back to the locations the show featured, even ones that were originally introduced. He added, “I think that gave me the most joy,” while talking about this. The way they jump from one spot to another, in my opinion, made it really entertaining to watch.
Alison McKinnon, who had a comparatively brief acting career and only one credit to her name, was the woman he married in 2010.
Jack William Boyd, their only child together, was born in 2006.