LONDON — “The Lord of the Rings is a great sense of pride to us because it's a film with a Christian message and it makes no apologies. I wish there were more films like that,” says Catholic casting director Ros Hubbard.

Hubbard and her husband, John, run Hubbard Casting, one of the U.K.'s top casting agencies. Their movie credits include Evita, Angela's Ashes, The Commitments, Patriot Games and Loch Ness. And on British TV, they have casted for top programs such as “Bravo Two Zero,” “Oliver Twist” and “Father Ted.”

Hubbard was delighted when Peter Jackson, the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, asked Hubbard Casting to find a suitable cast for the films.

“We casted Kate Winslet for him in Heavenly Creatures, her first film. Peter's very loyal,” Hubbard said.

Hubbard spoke with the Register in her mews house in the heart of London's West End, around the corner from her office. A candid and down-to-earth woman who takes her Catholic faith seriously, she is thrilled the first two films, The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, have been such massive box-office hits, and she hopes the just-released final part of the trilogy, The Return of the King, will be equally successful.

J.R.R. Tolkien took more than a decade to write The Lord of the Rings. Written as six books but published as a trilogy, it runs more than 500,000 words. The hero, a hobbit named Frodo Baggins, takes a perilous journey to the heart of darkness to save a world called Middle Earth.

Given Tolkien's Catholic faith, the story is about the battle of good and evil and is full of Christian allegory.

But the books are not the easiest of reads, Hubbard concedes.

“I tried to read The Lord of the Rings several times and I read bits to my children, but it's heavy going,” she said. “You have addicts for it; people who know every character and every line. Very often you read a book and then find that the script is not so good. With Lord of the Rings the script was so good.”

This might be a more cynical time than the 1940s, when Tolkien authored his epic fantasy, but Jackson said the trio's themes are as relevant to contemporary society today as they were half a century ago.

“What that proves is that Tolkien's themes are timeless,” Jackson told the Register. “He wrote Lord of the Rings pretty much during the years of World War II, having himself had horrific experiences in World War I as a lieutenant in the British army. He went into World War I with a huge amount of school friends and at the end of the war only two of his friends were alive. He saw everybody die. And you know, that would affect somebody, and his themes of courage and friendship without strings attached and self-sacrifice I think resonate probably from his life experiences.”

“It's interesting that America adopted Lord of the Rings as did the hippie generation of the '60s, who were reading all sorts of messages with the Vietnam War and the atomic bomb,” Jackson added. “I mean, the young American reading the book today isn’t certainly thinking about Vietnam, yet it still has a message, so I just think his themes are universal and timeless, so you can obviously take from the book or the movie whatever you choose to take.”

Movies and Religion

Hubbard admits being a Christian in the film industry is not easy.

“People in my business often hide their religion,” she said. “And they will usually use the word spiritual rather than Christian. There was a time when it was easy to be a Christian because most people were.

“When I say I'm a recovering or suffering Catholic people laugh and ask me about guilt,” she continued. “There's no more guilt in religion than in any other moral code — even Catholicism.”

Did she have any misgivings about casting for “Father Ted,” the popular TV comedy series about three priests in Ireland?

“John turned down Father Ted initially because he thought I wouldn’t want to do it,” Hubbard said. “But when I read a script I laughed out loud. I said we have to do it because no one else will understand its Catholicism. It was disrespectful at times. But I never felt the characters were bad. The thing that came through was their innocence.”

She added with a chuckle that they gave away the first fees from the “Father Ted” series to an Irish third-world charity — just in case God might have been upset.

The culture needs more films with a Christian message, Hubbard believes.

“When the millennium approached there were several scripts about Christ, but none of them got made,” she said. “If you think about those big pictures that were made about Christ years ago, such as Ben Hur and The Silver Chalice, they were made by Jews in America. They said, ‘Great story. Let's make it.’ I thought Jesus of Nazareth was wonderful and it wasn't made that long ago.

“We do so many nonspiritual films,” she added. “The Americans are much more at ease with films that contain a spiritual message. In Ireland they are specializing in films with violence and sex. They no longer want to be seen as a religious country.

“I've turned down scripts because I thought they were immoral,” Hubbard said. “I did Nothing Personal, which was set in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. It was violent, but I liked it because it showed a balanced view of both sides.”

Greg Watts writes from London.