karl urban -- éomer the warrior

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HE’S CROSSED SWORDS WITH XENA AND HERCULES BUT AS A FIERCE WARRIOR OF THE ROHAN PEOPLE, HE’S MET HIS MATCH AGAINST ANOTHER GREAT KIWI BATTLER – PETER JACKSON

Forty Feet Below his hotel suite in midtown Manhattan, New York’s Park Avenue is awash with people scurrying to work, a tangle of taxis and irate drivers grid-locked in traffic jams. Karl Urban is watching intently, transfixed by the mayhem below. He’s clearly excited to be in the Big Apple to promote The Two Towers, the second installment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and talk about his role as Éomer, a mighty Rohan warrior. But he’s also a little wary because it signals the start of a dilemma for him: what next?

That’s because after a decade plying his trade in local theatre and film productions and in such television classics as Shortland Street, Hercules and Xena, Urban has reached the pinnacle of his profession in New Zealand. Consequently, a new chapter in his career, with new challenges, beckons in Hollywood.

“Although I love living there and don’t want to live anywhere else, I can’t live and work in New Zealand my entire life because as far as this profession goes, there’s only so much you can do back home,” he sighs. “I kind of feel that I’ve already reached the point where I’ve done everything that I can in New Zealand and now I have to look overseas.

I’m not putting New Zealand or its film industry down because it’s been an amazing launch pad for my career but New Zealand is a small pond and it’s easy to be a big fish in a small pond. It’s safe,” he asserts. “I want to get out there and expose myself to the broader experience of what it is to be an actor working internationally. I’d consider it almost a failure on my behalf if I wasn’t able to maximise this opportunity and continue to work internationally. It’s what I’ve been working towards the last 10 years.”

Consequently, Urban has been flitting back and forth between Los Angeles and Auckland on what he describes as “mercenary runs” to meet as many agents, directors and producers as possible in a fortnight, before returning home to his partner Natalie and two-year-old son Hunter. His sorties have already netted him a Hollywood movie, Ghost Ship, co-starring Gabriel Byrne and Julianna Marguilies, which opened Stateside on Halloween.

Urban’s motives aren’t purely mercenary though; they’re also practical. The reason? He’s reached the point where he’s no longer offered work in New Zealand, simply because he’s too well-known, following memorable movie roles in Via Satellite, Heaven, The Irrefutable Truth About Demons and The Price of Milk.

“I’d like to continue to work there, I really would. But producers stop hiring New Zealand actors once they’ve had a certain amount of exposure,” he explains. “It’s like, ‘Oh,it’s him again. Who else have we got?’ That’s why people like Martin Henderson, Martin [sic] Csokas and even Russell Crowe have all left. They’re either not getting work or they’ve reached critical mass. (It's MARTON Csokas.)

“If you want to continue acting, you have to seek work elsewhere because New Zealand’s film industry is so small. There’s not that much work going on. That’s why I’ve spent vast amounts of my career being unemployed,” he sighs. “I haven’t actually worked on a New Zealand project in over two years for that reason.”

During periods out of work, Urban hasn’t wallowed in self-pity, rested on his laurels or remained idle. Instead, he’s continued to develop, flex and hone his acting skills by living life to the full. He’s also utilized these interludes to physically and psychologically prepare himself for new roles and new opportunities, arguing that this ‘down-time’ is just as important to his acting as the time he’s actually filming on set.

“Whatever you do, wherever you go, you can’t help but learn or observe, whether it’s by watching a great performance in a movie or just the way someone walks, talks or laughs,” Urban surmises. “Acting’s like a process of osmosis. So as an actor, you keep you eyes open and when you see something interesting, you make a mental note of it. Robert de Niro used to do that. “He’d walk around New York with a notepad and write down things he saw people doing.

“Acting’s very much like boxing, in the sense that a boxer doesn’t just come out of the corner and that’s the first time he’s thrown a punch in six months,” elaborates Urban. “He’s trained damn hard to get to the point where he’s ready to annihilate the guy in the opposite corner before he steps in the ring. It’s the same with acting, to a certain extent. How you utilise your downtime prepares you for future work opportunities.

“My philosophy is whatever you do, you’ve got to invest in yourself. If you don’t, there are a lot of people out there who will get the job because they’re more prepared than you. As far as personal growth goes, you short-change yourself if you don’t invest in yourself.

“But I think you can be too self-absorbed in your work,” Urban continues. “You’ve got to have a balance between work and play because this business is selfish enough not to have to donate 100 per cent of your time to it,” he cautions. “I have a certain amount of time that I work or prepare for a role and the rest of the time I just relax with my friends and family, enjoy life, walk the dog and fish, so that when I go back to work I feel refreshed. (As an English major, I must point out that this sentence is the perfect example of why a comma before a conjunction in a list is important. Karl likes to walk the fish? This cracked me up.)

“Having the flexibility to do that – and not be sitting in an office, nine to five, working with the same people year in and year out – is one of the things I love about this job. There’s a lot of variety, the chance to meet new people, make new friends and acquire new skills, whether it’s horse riding for Lord of the Rings or scuba diving for Ghost Ship. That’s exciting.”

Although Urban clearly enjoys his work and takes it seriously, he doesn’t take it too seriously. He wasn’t always so nonchalant about his career though, especially at the beginning. However, his attitude and approach have mellowed in recent years, partly because he’s older and has a greater understanding of the industry, but principally because he’s re-evaluated what’s important in his life these days.

“I used to take this job really seriously but nowadays I have a lot more humour about it,” he explains. “I think it’s probably a combination of turning 30, working in the business for 10 years and becoming a dad. When you’re young, you start off full of energy, with idealistic notions and dreams of stardom. But after life’s kicked you in the guts a couple of times, you stop living in a fantasy world and start coming to terms with the reality of trying to balance a credible film career with making a living and putting food on the table for your family.

“I think it’s inevitable that as you go through life, your priorities change and evolve. Just look at any actor’s or musician’s career. When they start off, they do all this phenomenal work, like their Raging Bulls or Space Odysseys, then further down the line they start doing screwball comedy or writing passé pieces of music. It raises the question: how long can you keep that intense level of activity and focus up?”

For Urban, the answer is clear: as long as he can. (I'm sorry, but this answer to "How long can he keep it up?" is lame. Even "as long as possible" would've been better.) Consequently, he’s unwilling to accept any part that doesn’t have some tangible worth, irrespective of how much cash is on offer. That’s why he famously turned down media mogul Aaron Spelling when offered a role as the ‘hunnk’ in a prime time American television series.

“It would’ve been all right if it wasn’t such a one-dimensional character and wasn’t just eye-candy,” he shrugs. “But at the end of the day, because I’m the only person that I have to please, I’m very selfish about what I work on. I look for projects that interest me, with good stories and multi-dimensional characters.

“Unfortunately, there are so few great scripts around that everyone else is after the same small piece of the pie,” he laments. “So it’s dangerous to be too picky. If you are, you’ll either find yourself unemployed or not ready for that ‘golden opportunity’ when it arrives because you turned down projects that would have helped you learn and develop your craft.

“Look at Viggo Mortensen. He’s been around a long time and now when you watch him in The Lord of the Rings, you can see he’s ready. It’s his time! What he does on screen is so commanding because he’s done so much work and been in so many films.

“It’s incredible watching him because every take he does is just the slightest bit different from the last. It gives each scene new meaning and depth. It was such a privilege and pleasure to work on this film, with actors and a director that are so in command of their craft. It really helps you lift your own game.”

Although Urban appreciated being surrounded by renowned actors such as Mortensen and Sir Ian McKellen, he also admits he found the prospect daunting – particularly on his first day.

“I was already quite nervous because I’d never worked on a film of this scale before,” he admits. “It felt like it was my first day of school! I was worrying about how I’d fit in and if I’d do a good job. Then, as if I wasn’t nervous enough, just as I was about to do my first take, I looked over my shoulder and Ian McKellen and Liv Tyler had walked over to watch me. It was terrible! But after I’d finished, Ian came up to me and said, ‘Good work’, which was reassuring. They were both so supportive and made me feel like part of the family.”

Although he has immense respect and admiration for his more famous co-stars, Urban is keen to point out that he wasn’t in awe of them and that he wasn’t wandering around star struck.

“If you’re going to be working with people who have such an international profile, it helps not to get star struck. I certainly try not to. Besides, stars are just normal people. They eat, sleep, shit and fuck just like anybody else. It’s important to remember that.

“Being a part of this industry, especially when you start getting somewhere, means you’ll inevitably end up working with people whose work you’ve admired. But getting tongue-tied [around them] doesn’t help your cause. What you’ve got to remember is, you wouldn’t be there unless you deserved to be there. That’s what it comes down to. Peter Jackson cast me in Lord of the Rings because he knew I could do the job.

“I’m glad he did though, because it led to one of the most incredible film experiences of my life,” he smiles. “I don’t know if it will ever, or could ever, be topped. I’ve shot seven films now and Peter is by far the most advanced director, in terms of craft, I’ve ever worked with. He’s so assured and so calm that no matter what catastrophe confronts him, he deals with it. That attitude – and his calmness – permeated the whole set and made us as actors want to do the very best we possibly could.”

After such a personally and professionally rewarding experience, Urban acknowledges it’s going to be a hard act to follow. But he’s philosophical. Likewise, he isn’t fazed about the future, despite no firm film offers since he finished work on The Two Towers and its follow-up, The Return of the King.

“I’m realistic. I know that every film I do isn’t going to be perceived as a great piece of art and that inevitably I’ll end up working on some crap,” he shrugs. “But so long as there’s a couple of gems in there too, like this movie, then I’ll be happy. Similarly, I don’t spend hours fantasizing about what’s going to happen or whether I’ll become famous. I’m just looking forward to seeing what happens next and cherishing the experience.

“This, for me, is a really special time in my life and I feel very privileged to be part of the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy, to be part of cinematic history and something millions of people around the world are going to be entertained by,” he enthuses. “That’s why I became an actor. I certainly didn’t do it to be famous.”

In fact, Urban happily admits he’d prefer to be anonymous and tries his hardest to remain so by maintaining a low profile and jealously guarding personal details about his life. But an unexpected threat to his ploy is the discovery that his face is about to appear all around the world on an action figure of himself, as part of the merchandising for The Lord of the Rings.

“I just find that bizarre. Part of me thinks, ‘This is so ridiculous’,” he laughs. “But I try to keep it all in perspective because on an international scale, I’m still relatively unknown. Things may change when this comes out. But then again, they may not. So I’m just going to take things as they come, roll with the punches and let the chips fall where they may. (Do you think there are enough clichés in that sentence?)

“As for the future, I’d love to work in Hollywood and do a big blockbuster,” continues Urban. “But if and when I do, I’m not about to say, ‘That’s enough’, because I want to continue this journey for as long as I can and for as long as it fulfills me.

“The day I stop enjoying doing this is the day I’ll quit,” he concludes. “But before then, I’d ideally like to be in the position where I work six months somewhere on a project, then have six months off in New Zealand. It’s really important to me to have that balance because New Zealand is my home and always will be. It’s where I want to grow old and raise my kids!”

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