Your Gríma
 

So how do you picture Gríma?

Is he as PJ portrays him, dark haired, black garb, gothic...screaming "I am a dark traitor"?

Is he more of a Rohirric decent, blonde haired and regularly dressed?

Is he like Bakshi portrayed him? Do you see him as an ugly graveling mindless little thing with a hunchback?

Is he a combination of all three?

I'm interested!

Grima is described as "wizened" so he is either old or has an illness or is simply what they used to call a 'weakling'. Given what we know of Rohan, men who were tall and strong were obviously valued as the 'ideal' so any man who did not fit that bill would have to find some other way of getting ahead than hunting and fighting. Grima must have found his way by becoming an advisor to the King. I also like to think that he was easily corrupted by Saruman because he had high ambitions for himself - Saruman gave him the ability and skill to twist the King's mind so adeptly, and this must have been something Grima saw as a way to advance himself.

I don't see him as 'old' in age, merely in appearance - and I think his lack of good looks was also a way for Saruman to tempt him with promises of having Eowyn for a wife, as there had to be some reason why she would not consider her Uncle's trusted advisor a decent match. She actively finds him repulsive so there must have been something unfortunate about his appearance - and note that even Saruman seems to taunt him about this fact.

There's something quite sad about him in a way, in that he felt the need to submit himself to such treachery as his only way of 'getting on'.

Before the movies, I never imagined Grima as possitively ugly. He was less-than-beautiful, that's for sure, but I felt that to be the King's advisor he must've won over not only the King himself but other nobles/advisors and it's that much harder to win people over if you are repulsive to look at, like PJ's Grima was.

Also, I believe it's stated that Grima served Theoden before turning to his evil ways, so I'm not sure Saruman would've given him the "power to convince", it must've been something Grima had on his own.

For your amusement...
 

I really don't know how I imagine him nowadays. It depends a lot. It is a mixture of PJ's monster-like dark Gríma and a blonde acne-faced version I have for some reason. And it is very difficult to totally banish my childhood image of him, which was something like this:

http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i5...n/IMG_4618.jpg

Yes, I pictured him with green skin with pink and yellow spots or warts. :eek: I think I maybe imagined him to look a bit less reptilian than in that pic but I never was good at drawing profiles, especially not when I was a child. :D And he is also intentionally depicted as short and crouchy.

I pictured him looking much like Brad Dourif actually looks, without the bizarre makeup/shaved eyebrows/contact lenses/wig. Light brown stringy hair, scrawny, pale (but not goth-makeup white), and rather intense/insane looking, with a lot of nervous tics.
This, of course, was long before the movies came out and before I know who Brad Dourif was, too.

I saw him as a sickly blonde man. Very bitter, and easily swayed. Power hungry. Bitter because of his sickliness in what is obviously a physically powerful nation. Since he is bitter, he is easily swayed and power hungry. Any thing to get back at those who hurt him.

I cannot get a "clear view" now, but I definitely pictured him something like short, also it could be said old man, definitely not with blonde hair and probably not even with black ones. He could have been even bald (though when I saw his picture on one I.C.E. card where he is really bald, I was quite startled). Normal skin-colour. Yup, but one of these short, old men with high voice, in movies they sometimes have glasses almost on the end of their nose and they work in libraries and similar. You know what kind of person I mean? Not that I would picture him being really an old man, but...
But I doubt he had beard. Definitely not. He couldn't.

Do you know the Igor characters from Dracula movies...well something like that, maybe not that monster-like and without the strange Russian accent. :D