Eowyn, the warrior woman

By HELEN BARLOW

Australian actress Miranda Otto, who plays Eowyn, the strong-willed niece of Rohan King Theoden, has the pale, rarefied beauty of someone who doesn't get a lot of sun.

That's not very Australian, and Otto was born in the tropical state of Queensland. She's not the outdoors type. That's what she likes about acting -- she gets to do things she would never dream of in her own life.

"I'm a scaredy cat. That's why it's good doing films, to test myself."

Her biggest test yet was The Lord of the Rings trilogy in New Zealand -- a very male-dominated experience.

"It was a boys' world, but there were a few fantastic women around like Philippa [Boyens] and Fran [Walsh], people I could commune with. But it was fun too."

Playing Eowyn in the second and third LOTR films might require her to swing a sword and ride a horse, but she's no Xena.

"Eowyn is a female action hero, but we wanted to give her a certain vulnerability too. We wanted her to still be a woman and have fears and concerns and worries and doubts.

"We didn't want her to be fearless and invincible because then you've got nothing to work on; it's all resolved before you even begin."

While it's mostly in The Return of the King that Eowyn flexes some muscle, in The Two Towers she is smitten with Aragorn, played by Viggo Mortensen.

The romance has been bumped up to emphasise the love triangle between her, him and Liv Tyler's Arwen.

"Arwen's a very different character to Eowyn," says Otto. "She's far more beautiful and feminine, she's a character who's meant to live 3000 years.

"I'm more an earthly being. I'm down in the dirt, in the dirrrt," she laughs, drawing out the word for emphasis. She falls in love with Aragorn -- "Eowyn is attracted more for his mythic qualities than knowing him," says Otto. "But he's kind and sensitive to her."

Could she see what her character saw in him? "Yeah, definitely, God yeah!" she yelps like a schoolgirl. "The first moment I saw him on screen I thought, 'This will be easy, he's fantastic!' He really put so much of himself into the role."

The Lord of the Rings wove its special magic for Otto, who soon forgot her usual life and, to an extent, herself.

"Oh my God, it's like entering into your own fairy tale, into your own dream of princess fantasies you had as a child. You'd imagine you were in a castle -- and boom! There it is! But the great thing about Eowyn is she has more backbone than most of those mythic women we are given in the western world.

"I don't know why it's happened that way, that we've ended up with Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella and we haven't ended up with the women in the Norse myths that Tolkien used. Many of them were slightly amoral characters, incredibly strong, and somehow we've ended up with the prissy ones. It's such a shame."

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Herald feature: Lord of the Rings