Karl-Heinz Urban was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on June 7, 1972. His father was a leather goods manufacturer and would have wanted his son to follow his footsteps . Karl now lives in Auckland and has a son, Hunter, who was born in November 2000, when Karl was filming “The Two Towers”. Karl has a black lab terrier named Ire after a Bob Marley song (from the album Uprising). His hobbies are fishing, surfing, golf, gardening, mountain climbing and he loves riding. If he wasn’t an actor, he would be a rock fisherman.

Acting is something Karl has always been interested in. He got his first acting role in the age of eight. It was a TV show in which he had one line: “They’ve got no proper clothes on!”. After that he didn’t act again until he left high school, though he wrote and directed plays and got involved in theater at school. He was offered a role as the ambulance driver, Jamie Forrest, in the New Zealand drama “Shortland Street” in 1992 while he was preparing to attend Victoria University. After the season 1993-1994 of the show he attended a year at the Victoria University, but eventually left it to continue his pursuit in a career of acting.

After he had decided to keep on acting, one of his first roles was as a heroin addict in the TV series Shark in the Park (1989). His first movie role was in a film Once in Chunuck Bay (AKA Chunuk Bair (1992)). After that he has acted in several tv series’, films, as well as in theatre. His biggest guest appearances in TV have been as Julius Caesar and Cupid in Warrior Princess Xena and in Hercules. During his film career Karl has been nominated for New Zeland’s best supporting actor from his role Paul the cameraman in the film Via Satellite (1998) and in Cannes he was nominated for best actor from his role as Rob in the film Price of Milk. His roles in theatre have been for example Jett Lane in The Herbal Bed (1998), Mark Anthony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1998) and Foreskin in Foreskin’s Lament (1999).

When the shooting of The Lord of the Rings had started and Karl still hadn’t get the opportunity to audition, he thought that he had lost his chances. But Harry Sinclair, the director of The Price of Milk, showed his film to Peter Jackson just when he was casting Éomer. When Jackson then called to Karl and offered him the part, Karl was thrilled and of course agreed to do the role of Éomer. Karl and Peter Jackson didn’t have an in depth conversation about the character of Éomer. Karl says that he was hired to do a job and he just turned up and did it.