WASHINGTON –聽He starred in “Lord of the Rings,” “Rudy” and “The Goonies.”
Now, Sean Astin hits all weekend at the Washington Convention Center.
“I was here last year and I came back because it was aptly named Awesome Con,” Astin tells 海角社区app. “People聽around DC and Virginia and everywhere that came in, it was just a family affair. People were dressed up and just having a ball.”
Astin joins a聽celebrity guest that includes (“Star Trek”),聽Ralph Macchio (鈥淜arate Kid鈥�), Judith Hoag (鈥淣inja Turtles鈥�), David Yoast (鈥淧ower Rangers鈥�), Brian O鈥橦alloran (鈥淐lerks鈥�), Dana Snyder (鈥淪quidbillies鈥�), Emma Caulfield (鈥淏uffy the Vampire Slayer鈥�), Kristin Bauer (鈥淭rue Blood鈥�) and WWE Champion Seth Rollins聽(listen to our chat with Shatner聽).
So which role聽is Astin聽asked about the most at these Awesone Con conventions?
“You would think it would be Samwise Gamgee, but it’s actually ‘The Goonies,'” Astin says. “I would say more people talk to me about ‘The Goonies’ and is there going to be a ‘Goonies’ sequel and ‘Goonies’ was my childhood.”
Astin was still a child actor when he starred in the 1985 classic, directed聽by Richard Donner (“Superman”) and written by Steven Spielberg (“E.T.”) and Chris Columbus (“Harry Potter”).
By the next decade, he had created one of the most inspirational sports movies ever in “Rudy” (1993), which recently joined his mother Patty Duke’s “The Miracle Worker” (1962) among the AFI’s .
“There’s a line in the movie, ‘Having dreams is what makes life tolerable,'” Astin says. “You set your goal, you set your dream, you decide what your ambition is. If you want to learn a language, if you want to travel somewhere, if you want to have kids, whatever it is, fight for it.”
Astin fought for it in his acting career and, at the turn of the millennium, landed the role of a lifetime in聽Peter Jackson’s groundbreaking聽“Lord of the Rings” trilogy (2001-2003).
“I don’t think that I even conceptualized 15 years later … people just binge-watching the movies. They’ll come up and they’re bleary-eyed and they’re like, ‘I just watched the whole trilogy yesterday,’ and you’re like, ‘That’s 12 hours!'” Astin says. “They’ll ask you to do a line from the movie聽— ‘There’s some good left in this world, Mr. Frodo’ —聽and you do that while you’re holding someone’s hand, and they’ll burst into tears.”
This weekend is your chance to “burst into tears” as you meet Astin in person.
“There’s no expectation that you cry,” Astin jokes, “but it’s entirely possible that you say something that’ll make me cry.”
Click for Awesome Con ticket information.
