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"The Desolation of Smaug star Stephen Fry has admitted that he has never read The Hobbit. Fry - who appears as The Master of Laketown in the second instalment of the film trilogy - confessed that he only skim-read the parts of the novel that featured his character.   He added that he had no idea who his character was as he flew to New Zealand to commence filming on the project. Speaking on Richard Herring&amp;#039;s Leicester Square Podcast, the 55-year-old said: &amp;quot;I usually read scripts. But The Hobbit, I&amp;#039;m not sure I should say this, but I&amp;#039;ve never read The Hobbit.  &amp;quot;And on the plane to New Zealand, which is a long flight, you&amp;#039;d have thought I&amp;#039;d have time.&amp;quot; He revealed that he used the search function on his iPad to find the sections that his character featured in in the novel. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s something about a hole in the ground where a hobbit lived. My character was called The Master of Laketown, so I thought, there&amp;#039;s a lot of this. There&amp;#039;s a search function, so I just put in &amp;#039;The Master&amp;#039; and it went to all the bits I was in. &amp;quot;I thought, &amp;#039;That seems like a reasonable part&amp;#039;, put the iPad down and read another book. So to this day I haven&amp;#039;t read it, but I am really looking forward to seeing how it all turns out.&amp;quot; The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug will be released on December 13. Watch a teaser trailer below:  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/the-hobbit/news/a490430/desolation-of-smaug-star-stephen-fry-ive-never-read-the-hobbit/>