Sean Astin spoke to an Amphitheater audience on Friday at Chautauqua Institution. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

CHAUTAUQUA — There is something about wanting to do good, and actor Sean Astin’s multiple characters over the years are focused on being just that.

Chautauqua Institution’s Week One of the 2023 Assembly season was focused on friendship, and Astin helped to wrap up the week.

Astin’s roles include characters such as Samwise Gamgee from “The Lord of the Rings,” Mikey Walsh in “The Goonies,” the title character of “Rudy” and Bob Newby in “Stranger Things Season Two.” All of these characters have a focus on friendship and the overall desire to do good.

“In my own life I kind of reflect on how much of that has been internalized,” Astin said Friday to an Amphitheater audience.

Astin talked about his own personal history, specifically his parents John Astin and Patty Duke, and how his dad essentially adopted him when he married his mom, bringing three older brothers for Astin with him. Astin has one younger brother as well, so he said when the families came together they went from just him and his mother to a house with five boys, and the love in that family along with the talent and drama there had an impact on him.

“I think who you are, who you really are, it comes with you to whatever you do,” Astin said. “And I think that something about that earnestness that I cultivated and a little bit of a twinkle, a little whimsy is what Steven Speilberg and Richard Donnor saw when they got me for ‘The Goonies.'”

Astin’s role in “The Goonies” is one that he has had that focuses on friendship, with the story being the main boys did not want to lose their home and were sustained by friendship, Astin said. He went from that role at the age of 12 to being in “Lord of the Rings” with the well-known friendship focus between Frodo and Sam.

“I think I just had a lifetime of understanding deeply in my bones what it means to have other people to rely on and what it means to be someone that other people can count on,” Astin said. “There’s something about wanting to do good.”

Astin said his parents raised him with a philosophy of caring about people. Many of his roles reflect this philosophy, and Astin said he always had a feeling he was where he was meant to be, but especially in roles such as Sam in “Lord of the Rings.” With all of his friendship movies, he still talks to many of his fellow co-stars and considers them his friends. Another of his best friends is his wife, who he has been married to for 31 years, calling her “my Samwise.”

“My point to her was, if we get to the end of our life and if we’re blessed to live a long life and we can look back across the sweep of our life and know that we shared it together, that we experienced it together even if we were not together all of the time … the power of that visible to everyone else friendship … but oftentimes unspoken, it’s like a visible but unspoken friend, it will make dying easier,” Astin said.

Astin talked more about his own family, including his daughter recently graduating from Harvard and another graduating from high school. He discussed his role moving from a child actor to being an experienced one with the children in “Stranger Things,” and his time with the Screen Actors Guild Writers’ strike as a part of the Union Negotiating Committee.

Following the lecture, there was a question and answer section for a few moments with the audience, and questions included how much of Sam did Astin see in himself, his political engagements, and the relationship between friendship and leadership.

Astin ended his lecture with Samwise Gamgee’s monologue from the second “Lord of the Rings” film, “The Two Towers.”

“There’s some good left in this world Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for,” Astin said. “Thank you all very much.”