Urbane Cowboy

“I’ve never played a character before who’s had the living shit kicked out of him on such a frequent basis!” says New Zealand actor Karl Urban of The Irrefutable Truth About Demons. Strangely, the same could also be said of his characters in The Price of Milk, Hercules, Xena and upcoming epic The Lord of the Rings.

Bob Marley vibrates from a precariously balanced discman on the dasboard. Irie, the black Labrador, pants in the back seat, oblivious to the song he was named after. Windows slowly slide down to combat the cloying heat and the car surges out of Auckland towards the west coast. As we arrive at the beach, Kare Kare’s black sands are the perfect place to throw a stick for the dog, test a kite and reflect on a burgeoning film career.

Between shoots for Peter Jackson’s mammoth Tolkien trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, and with two feature films read to screen early this year, Karl Urban is in a relaxed mood. A faded denim shirt holds itself together with one button and old jeans sit low with a few holes to mark their travels. It’s not what you might have expected from a man who has recently played the narcissistic bronzed god Cupid and the immaculately turned out Julius Caesar in both Xena and Hercules.

Urban’s inventory of recent roles could indicate a willingness to work for the sake fo it or to keep the money coming in. But it quickly becomes clear that for Urban, acting is not just a job, it’s an art form. It is no surprise then that he would involve himself in writer and director Harry Sinclair’s The Price of Milk, a return to the lush visuals and symphonic soundtracks of early cinema.

Sinclair (Topless Women Talk About Their Lives) developed The Price of Milk through the somewhat unusual process of first identifying locations and selecting a soundtrack, then securing the actors and, on the basis of these decisions, piecing together characters and a story.

“I was looking for location for a film that was going to be quite similar to Topless and I heard this Russian music as I was driving around in the country,” Sinclair says. “The music and the landscape together began to suggest another kind of movie altogether that was sort of magical and romantic.”

Sinclair had seen Urban in Scott Reynold’s feature Heaven and had a loose concept in mind for him. Urban, meanwhile, had seen Topless and wanted to be involved in a Sinclair project. However, as he recalls, the reality of agreeing to work on the film was rather bizarre.

“Harry said to me, ‘Would you like to be in my film?’ I said, ‘Sure. What’s it about?’ Harry said, ‘Don’t know.’ And that was that,” Urban laughs.

Sinclair’s approach to The Price of Milk was similar to a child’s game of make-believe: make up some characters, put them in a fitting environment and see what they do.

“We started to do little video scenes with Karl and Danielle [Cormack],” says Sinclair. “The combination of them and the landscape and the music sprouted a story of a couple who live together in this imaginary world with a little tiny house on a farm and have cows and all the other aspects of the film. The film just kind of grew by itself, which was great.”

For Urban, an actor who has likened preparing for his roles and discovering his characters’ traits to the work of a detective, working with Sinclair was an exercise in trust. Not only were the characters and story less than concrete but the script was written from week to week, with the actors being presented with their lines just prior to filming the scene.

Urban recalls one scene in particular that left him wondering just what he was doing. Sinclair told him his character Rob would lose his voice and instead emit a squeak when he tried to talk. Cormack helped him come up with a method to achieve the desired effect but Urban says he went away thinking he would never work again.

Sinclair concedes Urban had some difficulty with the concept of filming without preparation. “He found my approach quite hard at first because he likes to prepare and to think about what he’s going to shoot and have the opportunity to work on his work. This way was hard [for him] because I like the idea of throwing actors into a scene without them having processed it a lot.

“Karl and I were coming from different directions but fortunately we kind of both trusted each other and after the first few shoot days I think he got the hang of it. But he was kind of freaked out at first.”

But having roughed the fear of the unknown, Urban acknowledges the advantages of the Sinclair style: “When you’re acting, the most you can hope for is that you respond truthfully moment to moment. You need to cut the strings of preconception and by doing it with Harry you don’t have a chance to create the preconceptions that could make a performance stale.”

Sinclair’s unique three-day-a-week shooting schedules allowed for constant script development and revisions, while the relatively unrehearsed nature of the dialogue was an attempt to avoid a sense of ‘practised’ acting. “I like a natural kind of performance and I think that’s what Karl gives in The Price of Milk,” insists Sinclair. “I think you really feel for this guy because it doesn’t seem like he’s acting.”

The result is an unorthodox, magical, backward fairytale with guts. For all the subtleties and quirks of the characters, it is a simple theme that shifts to the fore of the story, a weighing up of ‘what’s worth what’ in life.

In stark contrast to The Price of Milk’s colourful and whimsical pastoral romance, Urban’s other recent feature film project is dark, both in visual impact and story. The Irrefutable Truth About Demons, written and directed by Glenn Standring and co-starring Katie Wolfe (Cover Story), has Urban’s character Harry Ballard wrapped in a web of deceit and spiritual confusion after his brother’s death leads him into an obsession with cults.

Karl from The Irrefutable Truth About Demons and The Price of Milk

Contributing to the film’s literal darkness was the fact that the entire Wellington-based film was shot at night.

The Irrefutable Truth About Demons, with its quirks and secondary themes, could almost be tagged as another mixed genre film. However, Urban pegs it in the lighter vein of horror movies. While the story could be said to contain some fairly meaningful musings, Urban believes its appeal will probably lie with the more youthful male populations – the traditional audience of horror movies.

He credits the film as another invaluable acting less – largely because of the talent and experience of co-star Wolfe – but it seems clear that Demons didn’t capture his heart as Sinclair’s film has.

Far from broody but firmly in the category of introspective, Urban seems well-versed on what he values. In acting, he has found something that encompasses two of his loves – the desire to communicated and the desire to learn.

“What drives me is the enjoyment of communicating,” he explains. “I think the main attribute that an actor must be endowed with is the ability to communicate because, essentially, that’s what you’re doing – telling a story, communicating with an audience.”

But Urban is not prepared to accept just any role. He wants characters and stories with depth. A healthy salary and the accompanying offer from television mogul Aaron Spelling to add some eye candy to one of his projects were turned down flat.

Says Urban of the Spelling offer: “It might have been all right if the character had some devious motives of evil intent but it was just the ‘hunk’ role. And with those acting roles, what you see is what you get.”

As his agent, Graham Dunster, succinctly explains: “He would just like to do good things. He’s very sure that he doesn’t want to do crap.”

Part of this resistance to ‘crap’ originates from his first exposure to cinema. He grew up in what he describes as a ‘renaissance period’ of New Zealand filmmaking. His mother worked at a Wellington production company and the young Urban had a cinematic diet of iconic films such as Smash Palace and Utu – films he still refers to as his inspiration.

At eight years of age, Urban had his first small role in Ettie Rout: Pioneer Women. But he then made a conscious decision to maintain a childhood and pursue acting later. However, the role had given him a taste for acting and a conviction that he could do it.

Now 28, Urban has a substantial number of acting roles behind him, encompassing stage, television and film, despite no formal training. “I tried to get into drama school but at 18 I was probably too young, too cocky and too arrogant.”

Despite, or perhaps because of, his apparent arrogance, he found work on Shark in the Park, Homeward Bound and Shortland Street. He gained some professional satisfaction from the work but self-assessment tells him they weren’t his finest hour. While his role as Jamie Forrest during what some might consider the height of Shortland Street made some impact, Urban says it was not the place to pick up the finer points of acting.

But, more recently, he has applied himself to “investing in his craft” with acting classes based on the methods of American Sanford Meisner. Urban suggests the classes are not a fail-safe guarantee but more of a guide for rough spots. “The technique gives you tools in case your instinct fails you. Acting for screen is a combination of two factors – the technical aspect and the instinctive aspect – and this technique was really helping me focus on being true to my instinct.”

Last year was an indication that his investment was paying off. Largely on the strength of his role in The Price of Milk, Urban was offered the role of Eomer in The Lord of the Rings films. Peter Jackson – director, screenwriters and producer of the trilogy – had not worked with Urban but was impressed by what he had seen of him. He’s also good friends with Sinclair, so he no doubt had access to inside knowledge of Urban’s acting ability.

“Karl has one of the best screen personas of any New Zealand actor,” says Jackson, taking a tiny moment out from shooting. “When we were casting for Eomer, we offered it to Karl. We didn’t really audition widely for the role. We thought he was the perfect fit.”

Despite the differences in scale of the film trilogy and The Price of Milk, Urban was surprised to find the directors’ approach [sic] to their respective work quite similar. “Pete’s like Harry, in many ways,” reasons Urban. “I mean, the script’s all there but ultimately [Jackson’s] got the picture in his head. He’s hands-on and he plays it fast and loose. If a scene’s not quite right, he’ll change it. If the actor isn’t getting it right, he’ll come in and tell you to make one small change and that’ll be it. He’s got his eye on the detail.”

The Lord of the Rings also gave Urban the chance to work with actors he had previously admired from afar. “It’s such an experience for me as a young actor just being in the company of the likes of Ian McKellen and Viggo Mortensen and Bernard Hill and being able to watch them and work with them. Every time I go down [to Wellington], I learn something new.”

That this talent and experience has been brought together in New Zealand gives Urban a lot of satisfaction. His recent roles have generated more overseas interest. And while he may take up foreign offers at some stage, he is passionate that the quality and integrity of New Zealand projects be preserved.

“I really respect Peter for choosing to apply his craft in this country,” enthuses Urban, “because doing that gives our film crews the chance to work at the peak of the film industry and it trains new talent. It creates more interest in our films and it clears the way for more projects.”

However, Urban worries that our films may soon be influenced by the Hollywood blockbuster philosophy that positions films purely as a product designed to sell and make as much money as possible.

“I fear we are moving toward a more product-oriented output,” sighs Urban. “We’re looking for more genre-specific films, rather than sticking with films that are unique to our cultural identity. But if you look at the most successful New Zealand films ever made – Utu, Smash Palace, Goodbye Pork Pie, Once Were Warriors – they are all strongly identified as New Zealand films entrenched in New Zealand culture. I think as soon as we try to make some carbon copy of an American film, we’re losing the way.”

As Urban talks, there is another glimpse of why he does what he does. Acting is a passion but it also gives him space to indulge in his other loves. On this particular day, he has come out to Kare Kare for an interview simply because he can. He can philosophise about politics if he wants to because he doesn’t have the constraints of a nine-to-five job. This way, he can surf and go on the occasional camping trip. He dabbles in fishing and swears by music, which to him is the purest form of art.

There is no doubt that Urban’s career is taking off but it is now facing some stiff competition for his attention. He has just become a first time father, with his partner Natalie giving birth to a boy, Hunter, just before Christmas.

“My life is at a good place right now,” concludes Urban.

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