Andrew Lesnie, the cinematographer behind the mystical scenes of The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit, passed away at the age of 59. The sad news of his passing had a devastating effect upon all his collaborators and friends. According to Variety, the Sydney-born Andrew Lesnie died of a heart attack on Monday. The cinematographic works signed by the Oscar-winning Lesnie remain behind as a token of his mastery and devotion towards the pictures which surrounded him.
The cinematographic career of Andrew Lesnie spanned about 40 years and his portfolio included about 50 titles. More than a decade of his career was spent along with Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit director, as Andrew Lesnie appears as cinematographer for all the J. R. R. Tolkien-based pictures. His efforts and creativity were rewarded with numerous Oscar nominations and one Oscar Award in 2001, for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jackson had not met or worked with Andrew Lesnie before The Lord of the Rings experience, but the director was heavily impressed by Andrew’s previous works, especially Babe (1995) and its 1998 sequel, Babe: Pig in the City. In a 2014 interview, Peter Jackson is quoted to have said: “I’d never worked with him or even met him before, but he’d shot the Babe films and I thought they looked amazing, the way he’d used backlight and the sun and natural light to create a very magical effect.” The surreal effect surprised in the 1995 comedy drama was the trigger which made Andrew Lesnie part of The Lord of the Rings journey: “And Babe had that larger-than-life feel about it that I wanted’’. More than that, Andrew’s native land seems to have been another key factor in that regard: “So when we began looking for DPs in early 1999, I first decided to get either an Australian or New Zealand DP as they’d be used to the way we make films,” Jackson continued. “Every country is slightly different in that way, and I immediately thought of Andrew. “
Apart from the J. R. R. Tolkien adventure, Andrew Lesnie is known for King Kong (2005), The Lovely Bones (2009) – another Peter Jackson directed picture, the Will Smith starring movie I Am Legend (2007) or Rupert Wyatt’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011). His most recent collaboration reminds of Russell Crowe’s directorial debut, The Water Diviner. When hearing the sad news of Andrew Lesnie’s sudden passing, Russell Crowe sent a tribute message via Twitter: ‘’Devastating news from home. The master of the light, genius Andrew Lesnie has passed on.’’