Karl Urban

Karl Urban started in New Zealand film and television, including a recurring run on Xena: Warrior Princess, and crossed over to Hollywood with the 2002 horror film Ghost Ship. What followed was one of the more unusual careers in genre cinema: two decades of being the best thing in films that often were not very good.

His specialty is playing behind an obstruction. As Judge Dredd he never removes the helmet, so the entire performance runs on jaw, chin and a voice pitched somewhere between boredom and contempt, and it works so well that the film has outlived every blockbuster released alongside it. As Leonard McCoy in the rebooted Star Trek films he plays a country doctor who is furious about being in space, a reading that gives the crew its friction. Éomer in The Lord of the Rings is the straight version, all posture and grief.

Then there is Billy Butcher, which changed the shape of his career. The Boys gave him a lead role built on a very specific comic charge, a man who is having an excellent time being cruel, and Urban plays the enjoyment rather than the rage, which is what makes it disturbing.

The rest is a long list of B pictures he elevates on contact: Doom, Priest, Pathfinder, The Chronicles of Riddick. He has also moved into voice work with The Sea Beast, and takes on Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat II.