Elijah Wood ‘Can’t Imagine’ How He Once ‘Juggled’ Being a Child Actor and Getting All His Schoolwork Done

Elijah Wood can’t believe how much he got done in a day as a child actor.

On the Jan. 7 episode of Inside of You podcast with Michael Rosenbaum, the 43-year-old reflected on his years as a child star, and how busy he was with schoolwork. The Lord of the Rings star said that looking back, he “can’t imagine” how he got all his schoolwork done on set.

Wood made his film debut at age 8 in 1989’s Back to the Future Part II. Soon, he was appearing in multiple movies a year, including 1990’s Avalon and Child in the Night, 1992’s Forever Young and Radio Flyer and 1993’s The Adventures of Huck Finn and The Good Son.

“My high school was entirely correspondence because at the time, I was traveling a lot, working on films,” he told Rosenbaum. “All of it was like email and writing on my computer and then sending everything to my teacher.”

Wood said this meant his education could be “more focused,” and Rosenbaum noted that “undivided attention” could be “beneficial.” Wood said that by high school this arrangement was “pretty normal,” since he’d had an on-set tutor from when he first started acting at 8 years old.

But the Yellowjackets star admitted he did feel “anxiety” about balancing his schoolwork and his acting job. 

“It's really interesting to think about it now because I kind of can't imagine how I managed to juggle those two things,” he explained. “Because you're supposed to do three hours a day of school on set as the requirement, per the union rules. I was doing that and also remembering my lines and having enough time to divvy those two things up. I kinda can't imagine it now.” He said it was “wild” to think about, but agreed with Rosenbaum that kids' brains can be more “elastic.”

Related: Step by Step's Josh Byrne Left Child Stardom Behind for Renaissance Fairs and Other 'Nerd Stuff'

Wood also credited his mom, Debbie Wood, with instilling in him good values.

“My mom was more concerned with raising me as a good human being than to being a successful actor,” he said. One major thing she taught him, he said, was “humility.” At lunch time, assistant directors would rush actors to the front of the lunch line. “She never let me do that,” he remembered. “She'd be like, “No. Get in line with everybody else.’ ” At the end of the day, she’d “always” have him hang up his costumes, which he still does “to this day.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.  

“That created a sort of worldview of how to be both as a professional [and] as a human,” he said. Lord of the Rings, which he booked at age 18, he noted was the first film set he was on as an adult without his mom.

Read the original article on People