The nine actors who played characters that were members of the Fellowship of the Ring (with the exception of John Rhys-Davies whose stunt double got the tattoo instead) got tattoos of the Elvish word “Nine” written with the Tengwar script shortly before filming ended to reference the fellowship and the brotherhood they established.
Dom Monaghan: Yeah, it was the number nine written in the language of High Elvish, which is a Tolkien language out of the Lord of the Rings book. By that time I had spent about two or three months in New Zealand, which is such a tattoo culture-or, I should say, moko culture, because in New Zealand they call it the moko rather than the tattoo. It feels like maybe three out of every four people that you meet in a bar has some sort of ink on their body. It’s just very much a part of their culture. So myself and Orlando Bloom were the most intrigued and interested in getting a tattoo. And I’m quite an obsessive person, so with Orlando and me leading the charge, we started to throw around ideas. We had the idea of a ring, or we were like, “What if we spelled out the words ‘One ring to bind them all,’ or what if we write the word ‘fellowship’ or something like that?” Then we started researching the languages in the books and what looked the most beautiful. At first we wanted to do something in Hobbitish or the dwarves’ language, but those don’t draw very well. So we decided on Elvish, which is really quite beautiful. So then on one day when we all had the day off, we said, “Let’s meet at this place on Cuba Street in Wellington called Roger’s Tattooart.” So the whole nine of us went in there with booze and cameras and just documented the whole affair. It was just a really beautiful experience for me. I think that was a great introduction into the world of tattoos. It appealed to all the things that I get off on-a feeling of connection and a feeling of permanence and something authentic and something real.