John Rhys-Davies talks to Yahoo! Movies Canada about sci-fi, ‘The Hobbit’ and why ‘Sliders’ still makes him angry

He's been tossed by an elf, helped find the Holy Grail and travelled back in time, but all actor John Rhys-Davies wants to do is be one of the first people to land on Mars.

"I suspect I shall be absolutely too old," Rhys-Davies tells Yahoo! Canada Movies on the phone from his farm on the Isle of Man (a place he describes as "75,000 alcoholics clinging to a rock in the Irish Sea"), of his desire to see the Red Planet. "It's a one-way trip, nobody's coming back but what a wonderful thing to do. I'm game to be part of the early mistakes made," he says.

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It's fitting that Rhys-Davies is talking about space exploration, as the 68-year-old Welsh actor will be meeting and greeting sci-fi fans at the Fan Expo in Toronto this weekend, an event that he is very excited about. "I find meeting the fans hugely enjoyable," says Rhys-Davies. "You get to reengage again with your audience […]It's very easy to lose yourself as an actor and lose sight of the fact that it's the audience that puts your bread and butter on your table and you owe them something."

Fans will definitely be lining up to meet the actor, known for such iconic roles as the dwarf Gimli in "Lord of the Rings," Sallah in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," and Professor Maximillian Arturo in the sci-fi series "Sliders."

It was playing Gimli that re-introduced him to a new audience -- which is why, with the recent announcement that a third "The Hobbit" movie will be made, fans are wondering whether Rhys-Davies will be suiting up in his dwarf costume for director Peter Jackson.

"No, I don't think I would put on a Gimli again unless there was a very special reason to do it," he says. "My face really can't take that sort of abuse anymore. It hurts a lot," he says, referring to the amount of pain and hours he endured in the makeup chair to play Gimli.

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Dwarves play a central part in the plot of "The Hobbit," and even Rhys-Davies couldn't resist visiting the set in New Zealand. "I was very miffed because [the 13 dwarves] didn't have half as much makeup on as I did," he says. But he has nothing but praise for his former director. "Peter Jackson is a master filmmaker at the height of his skills and abilities. I think ['The Hobbit'] will be a huge success. I certainly can't go wait to see it myself."

Since it seems, for the foreseeable future, that Gimli won't be reuniting with his elf pal Legolas, Rhys-Davies is contemplating other projects, including a possible top secret sci-fi show. Rhys-Davies is no stranger to sci-fi but feels that it can go so wrong, so easily. Take his former TV show "Sliders," for example. After being cancelled by Fox after three seasons, the series moved to the Sci Fi Channel for its last two seasons. The show took on a more action-oriented focus, which still bugs Rhys-Davies.

"'Sliders' still makes me annoyed and angry because we could have gone anywhere in space, we could have gone anywhere in time," he says. "But the writing wasn't good enough, the people who were running the show weren't experienced in writing science fiction. They just ended up ripping off everybody else's ideas and that's not the way I like to work."

Not even the acclaimed 2003 sci-fi series "Battlestar Galactica" impresses him. "Once you get a sci-fi show where people are having to fight, you realize that there isn't much science fiction going on there, it's pretty mediocre stuff." Harsh? Maybe, but Rhys-Davies, who is a council member of the Planetary Society, believes there is much more to the world of science-fiction than "gangsters with different costumes on."

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For now, Rhys-Davies will have be content with living on Planet Earth, exploring space in front of a green screen, or writing his own sci-fi series ("That's for another discussion," he says, when asked about the possibility of creating a show.)

"It's a glorious universe out there, it's a glorious time in mankind's history. I'm just miffed that I can't be seeing much more of it. Not enough to see man on Mars I don't think, dammit."