Karl Urban – Easy Rider

Éomer gallops into history.

He was nervous enough as it was. Years of cut-price New Zealand television and the odd local feature could hardly prepare him for something on this scale. The sets were the size of downtown Auckland, and there he was, atop his horse, trying to keep it in check, as the scene unfurled. Finally joining Peter Jackson at the monitor to review the take, Karl Urban noticed Sir Ian McKellen and Liv Tyler staring intently at the screen. Tomorrow, he cringed, it’s back to the day job. “Then Ian came up to me and said, ‘That was lovely.’ He was very supportive,” says Urban. “Everybody made me feel pretty quickly like part of the family.”

The role of Éomer, Third Marshal of Riddermark, was the chance of a lifetime for the handsome Kiwi actor (one of the few home-grown components of the cast), who had read the books as a boy. As a keen horseman, and given Éomer spends nearly the entire film in the saddle defending the sweeping lands of Rohan, it couldn’t have been more ideal. “I literally spent six weeks trying to come up to speed as quick as I possibly could. I got to the point where I could neck-reign this horse, which was ride it with one hand and simultaneously use a spear or sword.”

And then came the whole spiritual, life-changing kaboodle. “One night Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli had early calls for a dawn shot of them running along the plain, so we all decided to camp out,” he says, as if recalling a dream. “We went fishing, built a fire pit, roasted up some steaks and just had this lovely evening out under the stars. Producer Barrie Osborne sat around telling tales of The Cotton Club. I think for me, looking round that fireplace, that was the most cherished memory of the whole production.”

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