Movies - TV
How Karl Urban Landed His Role In The Lord Of The Rings
By JENNA BUSCH
In order to get bigger acting roles, Karl Urban revealed in an interview that he left his home country of New Zealand and was working in Australia in order to “work internationally, [...and] with the best caliber of filmmaker that I could.” However, it actually took going back home for the actor to finally get his big break in 2002’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.”
Believing in the philosophy of "an opportunity neglected does not often return," Urban decided to return to New Zealand to shoot a film, which ended up opening up more opportunities. One of those opportunities was Harry Sinclair‘s small independent film, "The Price of Milk," and the role actually got him on the radar of Sinclair’s friend, director Peter Jackson.
Sinclair ended up showing Jackson a rough cut of his movie, which was to Urban’s luck as he “just happened to be in Peter's face when he was looking for someone to cast as Éomer in ‘The Lord of the Rings.’” Urban got the part of Éomer, who played an important role in the second film as Rohan’s king, and his career finally took off as well.