The latter had been in Edinburgh just before Wood arrived promoting the Peter Mullan film

The latter had been in Edinburgh just before Wood arrived, promoting the Peter Mullan film On A Clear Day; another missed hook-up that had the American “gutted”.Wood is more fanboy than party boy, and his passions range beyond music. He’s a comic buff, and was so into Frank Miller’s cult Sin City that he nearly “fell off his seat” when its director Robert Rodriguez – an old pal since they made the high school horror The Faculty – told him he had worked out a way to film the famously dark and fantastical tale. Of course Elijah would like to play the part of Kevin, the cannibal who gets scoffed by his own wolf. Ditto Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which he played a creepy memory-erasing technician: he’d always loved loved loved director Michel Gondry’s pop videos, and Charlie Kaufman was the scriptwriting king – you betcha he’d like a part in anything those two mavericks came up with.Both these post-Lord of the Rings roles – each small but perfectly formed, in eye-popping movies a million miles from Mordor – offered radically different challenges Likewise Green Street. Wood lives in the more relaxed area of Venice Beach, remains close to his family, goes to gigs with fellow music-heads, and keeps up with the close mates he made filming the Rings trilogy in New Zealand, including Dominic Monaghan, the Mancunian star of Channel 4’s Lost, and the Scottish actor Billy Boyd. So it also feels relatively natural because it’s a part of my life anyway.”Unlike his peers in young Hollywood – Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Ashton Kutcher – living the glitzy LA life is not really this young veteran’s bag.

It was a name that my mom gave me, because I’d climb up on to things. And I just love the word Simian.” His original choice for the label’s name was It’s Not You It’s Me Records, “but I thought that was a bit ‘emo’,” he says, referencing the name of the genre of emotionally intensive geek-rock that American college kids are particularly mad for.How is he going to fit in time for all of this? “Who knows?” he grins through a puff of smoke “It’s ambitious, but it’s exciting And it’s nice to put my energy into something else. And I’ve been so lucky to meet a lot of people in the music industry and be friends with them. Every other Tuesday he and a friend take their iPods f down to LA hang-out The Bar, owned by another friend, and DJ for five hours – it’s “a totally random mix of music”. He’s trying to set up a radio channel for like-minded music nuts on Sirius, a subscription-only satellite service. “People can call up sports radio stations and bitch about sports Same with talk radio. But as a music fan, one of the most important things is discussion.

You bitch about bands, you talk about new records and shows you’ve seen. And there isn’t really a forum for that.”He’s in the advanced stages of establishing his own record label, and is currently trying to work out funding for it. He’s signed one band, is interested in another two and thinks he’ll be involved in “all the creative decisions” with the CDs he puts out The label is to be called Simian “I was always called a monkey when I was child. He talks enthusiastically of meeting Radiohead’s producer, Nigel Godrich, in Los Angeles the other week but was alarmed by news from him that he shouldn’t expect a new album from the band until next autumn. “Which is a bit of a shame.” The most exciting thing that’s happened to him of late was taking his mum to see The White Stripes at LA’s Greek Theatre It was her birthday, “and she’s a huge, huge fan They were incredible,” he enthuses “They’re insane They never play the same show twice. Wood has been making films for a decade and a half but his love of bands seems to be hardwired into his genes.