Miranda Otto played the role of Éowyn in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movies.
Career
Miranda is an Australian actress who got her break in Hollywood when she did the movie "What Lies Beneath" in 2000 with Harrison Ford.
Working on The Lord of the Rings
Miranda won the part of Éowyn in The Lord of the Rings after Alison Doody turned it down so she could have a baby. Miranda spent six months filming her scenes. She was required to learn horseback riding and sword fighting for the part.
Miranda made her first Lord of the Rings appearance in the second movie, The Two Towers. She possibly has the leading female role, her only considerable competition being Liv Tyler as Arwen.
She has more fighting and combat scenes than any other female in the movie. Miranda laughs at the fact that she had to actually take some blows at some of her 'enemies' with her sword when doing fighting scenes because Peter Jackson thought it wasn't "real enough" when she did the scenes with fake blows. In the Return of the King extended DVDs, one documentary makes note of how she earned the respect and admiration of the stunt actors for the intense effort she put in to learning and performing her combat scenes.
In The Two Towers and Return of the King, Miranda did a lot of scenes with Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn), which she describes as some of the most emotional. She also appeared in many scenes with Merry/Lost prodigy Charlie, actor Dominic Monaghan. Miranda's character in the movies has no real love interests, but perhaps a strong admiration for Aragorn—however, in the non-extended movies, she does give Faramir a few suggestive glances at the end of The Return of the King, which falls short of the kiss and romantic conversations their characters share in the books.
According to the third film's commentary, David Wenham (Faramir) and Miranda previously played lovers in an Australian radio play; Wenham recalled one scene in which they were supposed to simulate having sex in a bathtub (complete with the sound of splashing), but had difficulty during recording because neither of them could stop laughing.
Personal Life
Miranda is the daughter of prolific Australian actor Barry Otto and the sister of actress Gracie Otto.
Miranda hadn't always intended to be an actress. She was very passionate about ballet as a child, then in later years decided against studying a medical career to finally pursue acting. She graduated from Australian theatrical school NIDA.
Miranda is married to Peter O'Brien. They've been married since 2003 and have one daughter together, Darcey, who was born in 2005. Miranda was pregnant with Darcy while filming the movie War of the Worlds. Miranda continues to act in both American and Australian movies, but ever since motherhood has always taken breaks to spend time with her daughter and family.
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