Uma Thurman passed on playing Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings movies

Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is an iconic film series that had a huge impact on the careers of many of the actors involved in it. Over the past couple of years, we’ve heard from more and more actors who missed their chance to appear in the movies for various reasons. Nicolas Cage didn’t want to move away from his family to New Zealand, Adrien Brody wasn’t looking to play a “hobbit-like” character, and Sean Connery famously turned down the role of Gandalf because he “didn’t get” the material. Jake Gyllenhaal also auditioned for Frodo, but lost out on the part after a notoriously bad audition.

Collider recently dug up an interview with yet another star who admitted to passing on The Lord of the Rings: Uma Thurman. Unlike some of the others listed above, Thurman was actually offered a big role in the film. In another life, she may have played Eowyn, the warrior princess of Rohan played by Miranda Otto, who slew the Witch King of Angmar in one of the trilogy’s most iconic scenes.

Uma Thurman: Passing on Eowyn was “one of the worst decisions ever made”

The interesting story of how Thurman passed on the part of Eowyn is drawn from a 2017 interview with late night host Stephen Colbert. Colbert is well-known to be a Lord of the Rings nerd, and learned just before interviewing Thurman that she had passed on the part. He couldn’t resist asking her about it.

“It was a very long time ago, and I do consider it one of the worst decisions ever made,” Thurman said. “But I had just had my first child, and I just…I was a little housebound.” She want on to explain how moving to New Zealand for the three years required for filming was an “unknown” at an inopportune time for her. Nonetheless, Thurman admitted that passing on the movie was “definitely a regret.”

This isn’t too dissimilar from Nicolas Cage’s reasoning for not joining The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix; at the time, he wanted to be more present for his family. It’s hard to fault that reasoning.

As Colbert points out, this was before Thurman went on to star in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies. It’s fun to imagine an alternate universe where Thurman ended up fighting orcs and Nazgul instead of assassins while Miranda Otto battled the Crazy 88, but it’s hard to be too upset about it. Instead we ended up with Thurman in Kill Bill and Otto in The Lord of the Rings, and both gave incredible performances which we can go back to for years to come.

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