Yeah, she was in the book. Pretty faithfully depicted in the movie, too, compared to many major characters who got turned into comic relief. But compared to some of his contemporary authors, such as Agatha Christie, Tolkien was indeed quite conservative with female characters.
Tolkien was a wonderful creator of worlds and mythologies (even though he did plagiarize a lot), but as a writer of prose, not exactly brilliant. He definitely deserves major credit for bringing fantasy to mainstream popular culture, but he’s not my favorite author by a large margin.
That’s a pretty good description of how I feel, too. Except I don’t think they write male characters to be played by actresses - I think they just write sexless characters.
Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise, written in the early 1960s, is another great example of how a strong female character who feels like a woman should be done. Of course, part of what makes Modesty Blaise so special for me is because she’s a rarity among female protagonists. But she never became the big hit she could’be been because she was ~40 years ahead of her time. (And the last book alienated many fans, unfortunately.)
For computer RPGs, it seems the Japanese are better at writing female characters than Westerners - although for every well-written Japanese female protagonist there are a zillion fan service objects.