Who is Standing Next to Elrond at the Wedding of Aragorn and Arwen?

Q: Who is Standing Next to Elrond at the Wedding of Aragorn and Arwen?

ANSWER: I had to read this question several times over before I understood what the reader was asking. I believe the question refers to the blond-haired elf standing just behind Arwen and to Elrond’s right in this beautiful scene as Elrond presents Arwen to Aragorn in “The Return of the King”:

To be honest, I can’t believe the level of detail many of you notice in these movies. There were something like 15,000 actors and extras who appeared in the “Lord of the Rings” movies and you all want to know who every one of those people are. I don’t have the roster. I doubt anyone does. However, once a face is singled out one cannot help but attempt some detective work. And, as it turns out, a lot of these uncredited actors have been credited through other sources. Unfortunately, the sources don’t always agree on who is who in the pictures.

The Movie Dude Website identifies him as Sandro Kopp. IMDB lists Kopp as an uncredited “elven warrior”, which could be any character. According to a quote provided in the Daily Mail (see link below) he only appeared in one of the movies “for three seconds”. This fan site says he is Gildor, but it shows him in a different costume and in a different scene (riding through the woods as part of an “elf parade”). There is a picture of Sandro with an autograph where he apparently added “Gildor” in quotes. However, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and this article in the Daily Mail contains allegations from his former girlfriend that the Gildor persona is all made up.

This con report on TheOneRing.Net from 2005 says:

Jorn and Jarl Benzon and Sandro Kopp each played many different characters in the trilogy. They talked about the rivalries between orcs and elves during the Helm’s Deep shoot, and about the rivalries between “fighting elves” and “floating elves.” Sandro’s main role was Gildor, one of Elrond’s elf lords, but he also played a Helm’s Deep elf, a Rohirrim, an orc, an Uruk-Hai, a rider of Rohan, a soldier in the Army of the Dead, a Gondorian soldier, a corsair and a Haradrim. (He is the elf on Elrond’s right when the elves arrive for the coronation in Minas Tirith.)

Although I did make an effort to identify other actors who might closely resemble Elrond’s companion, the best identification (in my opinion) is for Sandro Kopp, although none of the “on set” photos of him in costume that I have found resemble the outfit that Elrond’s companion wears (and I cannot find any pictures of Sandro from other scenes where he is wearing one of the Rivendell neck clasps).

I don’t see any reason to question the identification of the actor as Sandro Kopp. Whether he is officially supposed to be Gildor Inglorion or some other character named Gildor, I don’t know. I have made a pretty extensive search of the Web but I cannot look at every site; and given the contradictions between many of the fan sites about who is who in these pictures, I’m not sure who to trust. If TheOneRing.Net says Sandro Kopp played the elf at Hugo Weaving’s side, that’s good enough for me (and there are multiple articles on the site making this identification, not just the one con report). But given the lack of official confirmation on the character’s name, I honestly have no opinion on whether that character is supposed to have a name.

Many actors will devise character backgrounds for themselves, and this is a perfectly legitimate practice. They want to feel the character has a real purpose or motivation in whatever story they are a part of. If that is all Sandro Kopp did, then, fine. He’s “Gildor” and we need not make a big fuss. But, of course, the fuss has already been made (the Daily Mail article was published in 2008) and that does throw a shadow of doubt on exactly who “Gildor” is supposed to be. The Decipher card is not using an image from any of the movies (so far as I am aware).

When I started writing this article (hours ago) I assumed it would be very short and summed up as, “I have no idea”. I was surprised to find out just how much information came out about many of the minor actors who had at best only very minimal supporting roles in the “Lord of the Rings” films (and I was surprised to learn that Jed Brophy, who plays Nori in “The Hobbit”, played several characters in the LoTR movies). If I ever knew all this stuff 12 years ago I had long since forgotten about it. What is more interesting is that there is any controversy surrounding the character, although the controversy either did not find its way onto movie fan sites or I did not find sites that mentioned it. A lot of this information was put up on the Web long before the Daily Mail article was published.

I was preparing to include a lot of photos of different elvish characters because I was caught up in the Rivendell Clasp motif. It’s interesting that you can find it on elves with both dark and blond hair. The blond hair does lend itself to identifying Sandro Kopp’s character with the golden-haired Glorfindel (whereas Gildor’s hair is never identified). In the books Glorfindel goes to Gondor and Gildor does not. But Jarl Benzon played Glorfindel in the movies (insofar as Glorfindel was used, which was almost not at all), so now we have yet another Peter Jackson inconsistency to munch on (if you go in for these kinds of mysteries). In the end I decided to just stick to the original question because costuming and adornments are way beyond my area of expertise. But did you notice that the Lothlorion clasps are much more ornate?

# # #

Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?