Lee Grinner Pace, born March 25, 1979, is an American actor. Pace has been featured in movies, stage productions and television shows. He starred as protagonist Joe MacMillan in AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire. He also played Roy Walker in the 2006 movie The Fall. Take a look below for 30 more interesting and awesome facts about Lee Pace.

1. He has appeared in film series, including The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 and The Hobbit trilogy as Thranduil.

2. Pace played villain Ronan the Accuser in the movie Guardians of the Galaxy, and starred as Ned in the ABC series Pushing Daisies.

3. For his role as Ned in Pushing Daisies, Pace was nominated for the Golden Globe Award and Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in 2008.

4. Pace was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma, the son of Charlotte, a teacher, and James Roy Pace, an engineer.

5. He has two siblings, a sister named Sally and a younger brother named William Pace.

6. As a child, he spent several years in Saudi Arabia, where his father worked in the oil business. His family then moved to Houston Texas.

7. Pace attended Klein High School in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston, with future fellow actor Matt Bomer.

8. Pace temporarily quit high school to act at Houston’s Alley Theater before returning to graduate.

9. While he was at the Alley Theater, he appeared in productions of The Spider’s Web and The Greeks.

10. In 1997, Pace was accepted by the Juilliard School’s Drama Division as a member of Group 30, which also included actors Anthony Mackie and Tracie Thoms.

11. While at the Julliard School, he acted in several plays, including Romeo and Juliet as Romeo, Richard II in the title role, and Julius Caesar as Cassius.

12. Pace graduated from Juilliard with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

13. He graduated from Klein High School outside of Houston, Texas. Other alumni include singer Lyle Lovett, actresses Sherry Stringfield and Lynn Collins, actor Matt Bomer, writer Tom Vaughan, and Olympic Gold Medalist Laura Wilkinson.

14. In 2008, he was ranked number 14 on Entertainment Weekly’s 30 Under 30 actors list.

15. Pace became good friends with actress Sarah Michelle Gellar, after working on the movie Possession.

16. He’s good friends with Matt Bomer. Both have circled parts in The Normal Heart written by Larry Kramer. Pace was directed by Joel Grey in his debut on Broadway on 2011, while Bomer was directed by Ryan Murphy in The Normal Heart. However, they didn’t portray the same character.

17. He portrays a paraplegic in The Fall, but director Tarsem Singh decided to keep almost the entire cast and crew under the impression that Pace also suffered from it in real life. A makeup artist walked into a room to find Pace standing and almost passed out from shock.

18. He’s two years younger than Orlando Bloom, despite playing the father, King Thranduil, to Bloom’s character Legolas in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

19. He did his own singing alongside Amy Adams in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.

20. Amy Adams admittedly thought, “he just looked so dashing,” on the set of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, that it made the director ask Lee to leave the set, because he distracted Amy too much.

21. Pace was considered for the part of Will Graham in Hannibal. He also turned down a guest appearance in the first season, due to his commitments with a Broadway play.

22. He wears blue contact lenses for his part as Thranduil in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

23. Steven Spielberg decided to cast him as Fernando Wood in Lincoln after seeing his performance in Ceremony. Spielberg seemingly didn’t take issue with the age different between Pace and Wood. In real life, Wood was 53 years old when the story of the movie took place. Pace was 33 when he portrayed him.

24. According to Steven Spielberg, Pace’s opening monologue in Lincoln was rewritten shortly before the scene was shot. Pace had to remember the monologue in four minutes before the cameras began rolling.

25. Upon wrapping The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, he kept his prosthetic elf ears and his character’s elven sword. The ears are kept in a book, while he keeps the sword in his umbrella stand.

26. Skydiving is an active hobby of his.

27. During high school, he attended the senior prom every year and was accompanied by a different girl each time.

28. His father is a Vietnam War veteran.

29. Pace is one of only three actors to appear in five movies in a row that all grossed $100 million in the U.S. box office. The other two are Will Smith and Robert Downey Jr.

30. On set, he often encourages his co-stars to have a dance-off between takes. He succeeded on the set of Guardians of the Galaxy as well as The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, and both times the dancing was filmed by the crew and went on to feature on the DVD Extras.