Lord Of The Rings actor Stephen Ure has revealed he had a panic attack on set due to the prosthetics he had to wear.

Ure, who played an Orc called Grishnak in the 2002 film The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers said he lost the ability to swallow and was “hyperventilating” while filming a battle scene.

• READ MORE: Lord Of The Rings TV series: Everything we know so far

“The more the panic is coming the worse it is,” Ure told Thrillist. “I’d never really experienced a panic like that. I was maybe three seconds away from ripping the face off so I could breathe. No one can tell because I’m under all that stuff.”

The actor revealed he didn’t tell his co-stars or other crew members as he feared it would cost too much money to remove his prosthetics.

“That was my own little episode,” he said. “I was completely freaked out for a minute. That could have been terrible. If I had ripped that face off then that’s the day gone. That would have cost tens of thousands of dollars.”​

Ure also added that his prosthetics were so convincing that the cast and crew didn’t recognise him at the wrap party for the trilogy, despite appearing in the first two films.

“I’d been working on all three films, and I knew people, I found myself just standing there in the corner alone because nobody knew who I was,” he said.

“At the time it took four and half hours to put the makeup on. I’d have to go in at 2am. By the time I was halfway through at half-past five when people started arriving, I was already unrecognisable.”

In other Lord Of The Rings news, the forthcoming Amazon series has resumed filming after last year’s shutdown due to the pandemic. Here’s everything we know about the show so far.