Zaphod Beeblebrox - As A Character

As A Character

As a character, Zaphod is hedonistic and irresponsible, narcissistic almost to the point of solipsism, and often extremely insensitive to the feelings of those around him. In the books and radio series, he is nevertheless quite charismatic which causes many characters to ignore his other flaws. Douglas Adams claimed that he based Zaphod on an old friend of his from Cambridge called Johnny Simpson, who "had that nervous sort of hyperenergetic way of trying to appear relaxed."

In (at least) the books, he is, according to screening tests that he ran on himself in the Heart of Gold's medical bay, "clever, imaginative, irresponsible, untrustworthy, extrovert, nothing you couldn't have guessed" (Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, page 98). In the movie, however, he is not very bright, and perhaps even more boorish than his previous portrayals. He is portrayed as a vacuous California surfer-type, and Sam Rockwell, the actor who played him in the film, cited Bill Clinton, Elvis Presley and George W.Bush as influences. Zaphod in the film is very much immature (in contrast to the books where he was immature, but had a lot of power and was smart and devious), acting very eager about everything, eating messily with his hands, throwing temper tantrums, and doing things without reason, such as pressing the Improbability Drive button just because it was large and shiny.

Throughout the book and radio versions of the story, Zaphod is busy carrying out some grand scheme, has no clue as to what it is and is unable to do anything but follow the path that he laid out for himself. Zaphod's grand schemes have included, over time, a second-hand ballpoint pen business (which may or may not have been established with the help of Veet Voojagig). He was forced to section off the part of his brain that stored the plan so that scans of his mind, which would be necessary for him to become president, wouldn't reveal his plan, which included his being President of the Galaxy and subsequently stealing the prototype Infinite Improbability Drive starship. However, in his altered state of mind he follows the path he left only reluctantly and very much wishes to go off and lie on beaches rather than see the scheme through. In the second radio series and the book version of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, we learn (and so does Zaphod) that the object of his plan was to find the man who actually ruled the universe – who turns out to be a man living in a shack with his cat who doesn't believe anything is real or certain except that which is seen or heard by him at any present moment in time.