Which The Last of Us Star Missed Out on Both LotR and Baywatch?

However, most people probably remember him as Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation. He was extremely convincing as a government worker who hates the government, becoming one of the most memorable sitcom characters ever.

But Offerman's filmography is by no means limited to those couple of roles. He appeared in dozens of movies and TV series, including numerous classics.

It is just that his roles in well-known classics tended to be minor, while productions in which he played more significant roles, like The Founder (2016), did not achieve much success, so viewers might be hard-pressed to remember him.

And some roles, which might have allowed him to boost his career and become more recognizable, eluded him.

A few years ago, Nick Offerman went over the events of his career, when he was a guest on Hot Ones.

And there was a discussion of roles he did not get. Those included roles in both Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and Baywatch TV series (he got rejected from the latter because the showrunners did not like idea of putting him in a swimsuit).

Unsurprisingly, Offerman especially wanted to appear in The Lord of the Rings, and confirmed that when asked what role he sought harder.

He even said how he wrote Jackson a letter expressing his interest in playing Samwise Gamgee, but got no answer. After that he managed to get an audition through the normal methods.

As he stated: "I made it to where they called me in, in you know the huge group, to put me on tape reading for the role of Gimli the dwarf. Spoiler alert: didn't go my way."

As we all know, the role of Gimli ultimately went to John Rhys-Davies (and Sean Astin ended up playing Sam). So, in the end Offerman did not really manage to make it big in Hollywood.

But he still enjoyed a long and busy career, and, for that matter, as his acclaimed role in The Last of Us evidences, his career is not yet over.