Miranda Otto slips into the ‘Rings’
By Jeannie Williams, USA TODAY
“It’s like being in your own fairy tale!” raves Miranda Otto of her role as Eowyn in the next two Lord of the Rings movies, The Two Towers and The Return of the King.
Otto, yet another member of the “Aussie posse,” won’t be seen until December in Towers. But you can spot her in Human Nature, a small, quirky movie opening in selected cities Friday, and as the American Mrs. Hurtle in the current PBS Masterpiece Theatre series, The Way We Live Now.
You’ve probably seen Otto in a number of smaller roles. During casting for Rings in 1999, she was in L.A. making What Lies Beneath, her first big-budget movie, in which she was a mysterious next-door neighbor to Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer. When she returned to Australia, where she is widely known, she was asked to read for Eowyn, a woman who becomes a warrior. Otto’s character wasn’t in Fellowship of the Ring.
Otto describes Eowyn as “slightly cold, white, emotionally distant, a lady. … But once Aragorn (played by Viggo Mortensen) comes along, there’s a huge well of feeling for him. She’s a very passionate person underneath.”
She spent five months in New Zealand on the two Rings movies director Peter Jackson made after Fellowship. She likes Eowyn because she’s “not some wimpy kind of Sleeping Beauty character, but someone with a bit of guts.” She “falls in love (with Aragorn). … But her love is unrequited, and she dresses up as a man, goes to war and kills the king of the witches.”
Otto, 34, adored the medieval costumes: “My favorite! I’ve always wanted to dress like that.” Even more, she liked the sword fighting. “It was fun, extremely liberating. I’d like to do more of it, even though I stabbed someone in the leg!”
Otto, daughter of Aussie actor Barry Otto, was once involved with Richard Roxburgh, the Duke of Monroth in Moulin Rouge. That ended a year and a half ago. As a “swinging single,” she has had “the best two years of my life, so much more time to concentrate on my life and career.”
She has had some hunky co-stars, including Mortensen. “He’s lovely! He was Aragorn. It was difficult to tell when Viggo ended and Aragorn began. And he’s an amazing sword fighter.”
In Doctor Sleep, her co-star was Goran Visnjic of ER fame; in Julia Walking Home, William Fichtner (Black Hawk Down). In Human Nature, she’s with Tim Robbins and the personable Rhys Ifans, who plays a man raised as an ape in the wild. “Really nice men,” she says. “It re-inspires me that there is hope out there.”
In Human Nature, she plays a French lab assistant to Robbins, who is involved with a hirsute woman, Patricia Arquette. Otto says the Charlie Kaufman-penned (Being John Malkovich) movie “is not your sitcom-type sense of humor. I think there’s a big market for people who are bored with what they’re seeing and want something a bit different.”
