When it comes to creepy-crawlies, feral creatures, and otherworldly landscapes, Dominic Monaghan is no greenhorn. In The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Monaghan’s Hobbit sought salvation for a ravaged Middle-earth, crossing paths with everything from berserk Orcs and demonic Ringwraiths to sentient, ambulatory trees. And on TV’s Lost, Monaghan’s tortured one-hit wonder, Charlie, fought with polar bears, smoke monsters, and unseen malevolent forces on a mysterious tropical island.
Those are, to be sure, merely celluloid fantasies, but they’re fitting when you consider the real-life quest on which the 31-year-old actor is about to embark. This September, Monaghan will head into the heart of Africa in search of the Hercules Baboon, a giant spider with an 8-inch leg span and 3.5-inch-long body that hasn’t been seen in the wild in over 100 years.
“It was the movies of Harrison Ford — you know, Han Solo and Indiana Jones — that made me want to be an actor. Those characters were always on a quest. They had missions to fulfill,” says Monaghan. “I’ve always been obsessed with trying to better myself, setting goals, and reaching just a little beyond my grasp. Right now, I’m going to find this bloody spider.”
The first Hercules Baboon ever to be identified is floating lifelessly in a jar of formaldehyde in London’s Natural History Museum. That specimen was captured in Nigeria in the early 1900s, and no one has reported seeing a Hercules Baboon in the wild since. But Monaghan, who maintains a vast collection of insects and reptiles, insists it’s out there. “And when I bring it back, we’ll go down in the Guinness Book of World Records.” A camera crew will document Monaghan’s adventures, and the results will be crafted into a television pilot.
Monaghan is also an avid shutterbug; while hunting the jungle wilds for the giant spider, he’ll click away on his Canon G9 and Nikon D200 cameras. His first gallery showing, called “Happy Accidents,” ran earlier this year for three weeks in Los Angeles. The title refers to photographs nabbed in that “moment where chance and fate take over and the thing you think you’re doing shows you something you didn’t expect,” he explains.
“But when I find that spider, it’ll be no accident,” he says. “That’ll just be a job well done.”
— By J. Rentilly
Photo by © (ABC/BOB D’AMICO)
