Peter Jackson Gets Honorary Palme d’Or From Elijah Wood at Cannes

Peter Jackson has never had a film in Cannes competition. He makes giant, sprawling, genre-defying epics about hobbits and Beatles and brain-splattered aliens in New Zealand. He wore a tuxedo shirt to his own honorary Palme d’Or ceremony — and almost paired it with shorts, just to see what would happen.

None of that stopped the 79th Cannes Film Festival from honoring the director with one of cinema’s most prestigious awards Tuesday night, and honestly? The whole thing felt exactly right.

Jackson, 64, received the Honorary Palme d’Or during the festival’s opening ceremony at the Palais’ Grand Lumière Theatre, presented by none other than Elijah Wood — the actor who played Frodo Baggins in Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and who, by his own account, had his entire life rerouted the moment he got that casting call.

Elijah Wood’s Speech Will Make You Feel Things

Wood, 45, took the stage with his wife, Danish film producer Mette-Marie Kongsved, by his side. What followed was one of those rare award ceremony speeches that actually earns its standing ovation.

He described how Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh had flown to Los Angeles after watching a VHS audition tape Wood had filmed with friends in the woods of Griffith Park. “I walked into Victoria Burrows’ casting office and there they were, Pete and Fran, together as they’d been for almost every day since they first met sometime in the late ’80s,” Wood said.

“And when, a little while later, the call came that I was going to be Frodo Baggins, I sat down on the floor of my bedroom and I understood with the whole of my being that my life had just been divided into before and after. And I know I’m far from the only person who has had their life changed by Peter Jackson.”

He continued: “Peter grew up in a country that back then barely had a film industry at all. But in true Pete fashion, that was not about to hold him back. You showed the world something it had never seen before, and nothing was ever the same. He helped build an entirely new filmmaking culture at the far edge of the world.”

Jackson accepted the trophy with a hug and immediately lightened the mood, noting that he’d “grown a little bit of facial hair” since they first met 27 years ago and joking that Wood’s cheekbones might qualify him for a Gone With the Wind remake.

How Cannes Saved The Lord of the Rings

Jackson’s history with Cannes is a full-circle story 38 years in the making. He first came to the festival marketplace in 1988 with his debut feature Bad Taste, a splatter comedy he’d shot on weekends over four years while working as a photo engraver back home in New Zealand. “If the film hadn’t sold well at the marketplace here, I would have gone back to New Zealand to my photo engraver job,” he told the crowd. “Fortunately, it sold really well. It started my career.”

The second visit, in 2001, was higher stakes and more fraught. Jackson and New Line Cinema had just finished shooting all three Lord of the Rings films simultaneously — an enormous, unprecedented gamble — and the press was not being kind. The AOL-Time Warner merger had thrown Warner Bros. into chaos, and the dominant media narrative was that this massive fantasy trilogy was going to be a catastrophic failure.

New Line founder Bob Shaye decided to do something about it. He rushed 20 minutes of footage from The Fellowship of the Ring to Cannes, screened it, and threw a party at a castle in the hills. The reception was rapturous. The story changed overnight.

“Bob’s great gamble really changed the perception of the film,” Jackson said. “And for me obviously, it was a life-changing thing. So by the time the film came out there was an anticipation that there wouldn’t have been if not for Cannes.”

That franchise ultimately won 17 Oscars. Tuesday night, it brought Jackson back to the Croisette for his third visit — this time to collect a Palme.

“I Just Don’t Make Palme d’Or-Type Films”

At a public masterclass the following day in the Debussy Theatre, Jackson was characteristically self-deprecating about the whole thing. He said receiving the honorary Palme felt about as likely as winning an award for bellydancing.

“I just don’t make Palme d’Or-type films,” he said, grinning. “I really like the idea of having a Palme d’Or without having to make a film.”

Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux had framed the honor rather more grandly before the festival: “There is clearly a before and an after Peter Jackson. Larger-than-life cinema is his trademark, and his all-encompassing art of entertainment is particularly ambitious. Peter Jackson is not only a great technician; he is above all a tremendous storyteller. And an unpredictable artist: what will his next universe be?”

Jackson admitted he was very tempted to wear a tuxedo jacket with shorts to the ceremony — a small act of rebellion against Cannes’ notoriously strict dress code — but ultimately “didn’t have the courage.”

The masterclass also surfaced a gem from his early career: multiple clips from his work were screened, including Heavenly Creatures, the 1994 film that gave a young Kate Winslet her feature debut. Jackson played a tramp who ends up in a scene with her. “I realized I gave Kate Winslet her first screen kiss,” he said, joking that he must have set the bar pretty high.

Why Andy Serkis Is Directing The Hunt for Gollum — Not Jackson

Naturally, conversation turned to what’s next for Middle-earth. The upcoming The Hunt for Gollum, which will see Andy Serkis both direct and reprise his iconic role, has been a topic of fan curiosity since it was announced. Jackson addressed the question of why he stepped aside directly.

“The film is about Gollum’s psychological and addiction,” he explained. “I thought, ‘Andy knows this guy better than anybody.’ The most exciting version of this movie is if Andy Serkis makes it.”

And speaking of Serkis, Jackson had strong feelings about the long-running debate over whether motion-capture performances deserve awards recognition. He thinks the current anxiety around AI is making a complicated situation worse.

“A lot of the current environment, everyone’s so worried about AI … I don’t think a Gollum-type character or a generated character has any hope for winning any awards,” he said. “Which is a bit unfair, especially in the Andy Serkis case where it’s not an AI-generated performance, it’s a human-generated performance 100% of the way.”

On AI itself, Jackson was more nuanced than the headline might suggest. “I mean, to me, it’s just a special effect. It’s no different from other special effects.” But he was clear that protecting actors’ rights is non-negotiable. “It’s absolutely critical” to prevent likenesses being stolen and used without permission, he said — though licensed use, in his view, is a different matter entirely. He did add, with a laugh, that AI is “going to destroy the world.”

A Night That Belonged to Jackson — and New Zealand

After Jackson’s speech, the ceremony had one more surprise in store. A clip from his Beatles documentary Get Back flashed on screen, and then French-Congolese singer Theodora and French singer-songwriter Oklou walked out to perform “Get Back” live. Jackson bopped his head, clapped along, and sang every word.

The Honorary Palme has gone to some extraordinary names this decade — Marco Bellocchio, George Lucas, Studio Ghibli, Jodie Foster, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford, Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, Michael Douglas. Barbra Streisand will receive this year’s second Honorary Palme at the closing ceremony on May 23.

Jackson joins that list as the rare honoree who never competed at Cannes, never made the kind of film Cannes typically celebrates — and yet somehow, the festival owes him as much as he owes it.

“The two times that I came before were monumental times,” he said of his 1988 and 2001 visits. This one, he called “profound.”