page_title: Lawrence Makoare
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Lawrence Makoare / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Lawrence Makoare at the Hobbitcon III convention in Bonn, Germany on April 6, 2015 with a fan cosplaying as his character Lurtz.
context_page_description: Lawrence Makoare is a New Zealand Māori actor. He is most known for his roles in The Lord of the Rings film series as several prominent antagonists, including Lurtz the Uruk-Hai and the Witch King of Angmar.
context_section_description: Makoare was a road construction builder who drifted into acting after he accompanied a girlfriend to a drama class and was picked out by the teacher to perform because of his impressive height. He began his career performing as a stuntman.
  Makoare is best known for his roles in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies.  In The Fellowship of the Ring, he portrayed the Uruk-hai leader Lurtz, and in The Return of the King, he portrayed the Witch-king of Angmar as well as Gothmog, the Orc commander at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. In The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, he portrayed the Orc commander Bolg, son of Azog. Due to filming commitments on Marco Polo, Makoare was unavailable during the pick-ups shooting of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, in which Bolg is portrayed by John Tui instead.
  Makoare is also popular among Xena: Warrior Princess fans, having played two memorable characters in the third season: a Barbarian leader in episode "The Quill Is Mightier..."; and Maecanus (a minion of Aphrodite) in episode "Fins, Femmes and Gems". In 2002, he portrayed Mr. Kil in the James Bond film Die Another Day. The director of The Dead Lands, Toa Fraser, was not enthusiastic about using Makoare as the warrior, but was won over by the way he managed, after a few directing hints, to turn in a performance that made him weep.
caption: Makoare with a fan cosplaying as Lurtz, his character from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-W730", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "350", "Image YResolution": "350", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2015:05:12 00:27:31", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0]", "Image ExifOffset": "288", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "814", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4436", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/40", "EXIF FNumber": "33/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2015:04:06 11:05:00", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2015:04:06 11:05:00", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "441/128", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "9/2", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2828", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2460", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}