Gollum on a bus looking at a woman with 'MY PRECIOUS' caption

My precious

2002catchphraseclassic

Published September 8, 2026

"My precious" is the raspy declaration Gollum makes about the One Ring in Peter Jackson's 2002 film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The line became a recurring image macro and voice impression used to claim ownership over food, gadgets, pets and partners, growing into a shorthand for possessive attachment across fan communities.

lord of the rings movie quote memes catchphrase memes villain memes early 2000s memes

Overview

The "My precious" meme rides on Andy Serkis's strangled, sibilant delivery of the line as Gollum, a character split between his hobbit past as Sméagol and his corruption by the One Ring1. Online, the format usually pairs a screenshot of Gollum crouched and wide-eyed with white Impact-style text, where the object of desire gets swapped out for anything a poster wants to hoard, from pizza slices to a new iPhone2.

A parallel version skips the screenshot entirely and just quotes the line in a Gollum voice impression, often stretched out as "myyy prreeciiouuusss"3. Fans use it affectionately about partners, pets and kids, and self-deprecatingly about their own attachments to guitars, video games or coffee mugs3. The tone can flip between cute and creepy depending on who is doing the impression.

Origin & Background

Platform
Film (The Two Towers) / image boards (meme spread)
Creator
Andy Serkis / Peter Jackson
Date
2002

The phrase comes from Peter Jackson's 2002 film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, adapted from J.R.R. Tolkien's novel of the same name1. Gollum, played through motion capture by Andy Serkis, uses "my precious" as his pet name for the One Ring, which he carried for centuries before Bilbo Baggins took it from him in The Hobbit2.

In the specific scene most often screencapped for memes, Gollum climbs down a rocky cliff face toward the sleeping Frodo and Sam, muttering and cursing them for stealing his precious before he attacks2. The line itself appears in earlier Tolkien text and in the 2001 film The Fellowship of the Ring, but Serkis's fuller performance in The Two Towers is what fixed the delivery in the popular ear1.

How It Spread

Clips of Gollum saying the line circulated on YouTube through the 2000s, including uploads of the original scene that have racked up views over the years1. As image macro culture took off on sites like 4chan, Reddit and Tumblr, the Gollum screencap became a reliable template for jokes about hoarding, jealousy and obsession2.

The phrase also moved off screen and into everyday speech. Urban Dictionary entries dating back years describe "my precious" being used as a jokey term of endearment for a significant other, a friend or a family member, typically pronounced in the Sméagol voice3. Other entries note darker uses, including drug-user slang for a stash, which shows how far the line drifted from its Middle-earth roots3.

The meme quiets down between Lord of the Rings anniversaries and Hobbit-era releases and then flares up again with each new nostalgia cycle, keeping the Gollum crouch image in steady rotation on fan pages and reaction threads2.

How to Use This Meme

The classic image macro format takes a screenshot of Gollum, usually the crouched cliff-side shot from The Two Towers, and adds a top or bottom caption naming whatever the poster is unwilling to share2. The voice version works in text by drawing out the vowels, as in "myyy prreeciiouuusss," and in speech by aiming for a rasped, whispering Sméagol impression3. It typically lands best when the object is trivial, like a last slice of cake or a TV remote, so the possessiveness reads as comic rather than sincere.

Frequently Asked Questions