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Comment by georgecmu | Hacker News Reader

As bonus trivia, depiction of Bilbo was based on the "short, round stature, expressive eyes, broad and open face" of the famous Soviet actor Yevgeniy Leonov (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Leonov).

In this video Leonov mentions this fact before reading an excerpt from the book: https://youtu.be/z7hEJxTBsTs

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George Costanza is looking at those stamps and thinking he coulda been someone in the USSR

That's the most Hobbit-looking man I ever seen.

He actually says just that!

Basically, he says that he was approached by some random person and was gifted a copy of The Hobbit. This person turned out to be an illustrator of translated edition (same as at the OP's link) and he made Bilbo look like Leonov (the guy in the video).

As a footnote, Leonov famously voiced Soviet version of Winnie The Pooh in all its glorious 3 episodes:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie-the-Pooh_(1969_film) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQmGXzNMw0E

I'm assuming you're not saying Tolkien based his description of Bilbo on that Leonov. Are you saying the illustrator based the illustrations on Leonov?

Does Leonov actually say that? Or just that the description and illustrations are similar to him?

In the video, Leonov says Belomlinskij (artist who made illustrations for this edition) himself gifted him this book and explained that he based Bilbo looks on Leonov.

Thanks. Youtube's auto caption + translate wasn't super understandable for me.

Here's that video in much better quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvNzEkS2B9U

He and Danny Devito would be such great Hobbits

Inconceivable!

I can’t compete with you physically, and you’re no match for my brains.

Wallace Shawn, another hobbit (also a great, if not the best, Ferengi).

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