who played gollum and bilbo in the lord of the rings

Given this vision of dwarves-as-ninjas, it's not entirely clear why the expedition needed Bilbo along in the first place.

The dwarves, who in the novel are mostly hapless, are in the film transformed into super-warriors, battling thousands of goblins or orcs and fearlessly slaughtering giant wolves three-times their size. Now I know: He's simply added extra bonus carnage at every opportunity. I had wondered how Peter Jackson was going to spread the book over three movies. The goblin battle is hardly an aberration in the film. The sequence is more like a body-count video game than like anything in the sedate novel, where battles are confused and brief and frightening, rather than exuberant eye-candy ballet. The scene where Bilbo spares Gollum in the movie comes immediately after an extended, jovially bloody battle between dwarves and goblins, larded with visual jokes involving decapitation, disembowelment, and baddies crushed by rolling rocks. If Jackson meant for Gandalf's comment to highlight Tolkien's nonviolent ethic, though, the rest of his film undercuts it-and, indeed, almost parodies it. Mercy is ultimately salvation, and Bilbo's decision not to use violence is at the heart of the quasi-Christian moral order of Tolkien's world. Later, in The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf suggests that Bilbo's pity for Gollum 'may rule the fate of many.' At the end of Rings, it is ultimately Gollum who, inadvertently, destroys the ring and saves Middle Earth. Bilbo then (in both film and book) leaps over Gollum's head, leaving the creature despairing but unharmed.

Who played gollum and bilbo in the lord of the rings