Karl Urban

The facts aren't all correct in this article. The places that are wrong are marked by asterisks and explained in notes at the bottom.

The 30-year-old New Zealander can be seen soon in the upcoming horror flick Ghost Ship, and will be in Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai* – but it's as Eomer, the sword-swinging Rohan orc slayer, that he's going to become internationally know. "It was actually kind of a weird way that I came into this movie," Urban admits. "I did a small thing, The Price Of Milk, which was directed by one of Harry Sinclair's very good friends.** And Harry actually played Isildur in the first film; Peter put him in it and Harry took a rough cut of The Price Of Milk down to show Peter and I really think that I was just fortunate enough to be in Peter's face. And suddently – out of the blue – the call came through, completely to my surprise.

For The Two Towers, Urban was certainly dropped straight in at the deep end. "When I finally get there, the first day on the set, they're shooting the Helm's Deep sequence. I'm used to working on small-budget New Zealand films, and then I'm on horseback in armour with 300 orcs fighting 200 guys on horseback in front of Helm's Deep, which itself is three storeys high. I was trying hard not to be nervous and just do the job, and right before the first shot, I look up at the monitors, and I see Peter there, and like I'm not nervous enough, Liv Tyler and Ian McKellen had come over to watch. And I was like 'I just didn't need that – I just didn't need any more pressure!'"

Eomer is a very physical role, and Urban had to train hard for all the head-lopping his character would engage in. "I spent six to eight weeks, five days a week, two hours a day, learning to ride a horse," he explains. "Eomer was a horseman, who has spent his entire life on horseback and has had a very brutal existence. So I wanted to get it right." On or off a horse, Eomer's frequent fight scenes were a challenge. "I'm wearing a layer of leather, a layer of wool, a layer of chainmail, another heavy layer of breastplates and over the top of that were shoulders, arms, knees and quite often a helmet, a shield and a sword. Some days on the set, we'd be doing five sequences with orcs and fight and fight and at the end of a take, sweat would just be pouring down under the costume. You certainly didn't want to eat breakfast before. Because that would really be a bad move!"

From a different article in the same magazine:

"I've never worked with a director who has such control of his craft," adds Karl Urban, who in the second and third films plays Rohan warrior Eomer. "He would be directing three or four sequences at a time using monitors and cell phones, and still you could come up to him with a question about your character and he would be there for you. ONe day, we had to stop shooting because it had been snowing, so the set was covered in snow, but he just called upon some guys to melt the snow. So the did and one hour later, we'd go on filming."

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