Exclusive: Éowyn Speaks

You've got a whole week all to yourself on the set of The Lord of The Rings, perhaps the biggest and best film production of all time, so what do you do? Commune with a couple of Orcs, take a stroll around Helm's Deep or ask an Uruk-hai to take it outside? Nope, Empire's canny Ian Nathan wisely chose to strike up a tete-a-tete with one of the very few women in Tolkein's world, the rather beautiful Miranda Otto aka new character wyn. There's going to be no Galadriel-like sitting around looking pretty for this lady in The Two Towers. "I had to do lots of sword training," she told Empire. "As a woman I highly recommend it. It's a great thing because you get to let out so much aggression – you don’t have to punch people in the head, you can do it all with the sword." A shy, blushing beauty, she is obviously not. Moments of dreamy-eyed, girly longing in the direction of one Viggo Mortensen will, of course, punctuate all this girl power Middle-earth-style. Eowyn's infatuation with the long-haired lover boy of the saga, Aragorn, will, however, remain suitably loyal to the book. "There's no sex in Tolkein!" she laughed. "It is more subtle and romantic. Basically, not to give too much away, it is an unrequited relationship." For the full interview with Miranda Otto and a perfectly splendid thirty-five pages of everything you need to know about Peter Jackson's stunning sequel, make sure you bag yourself the January issue of Empire on sale from Friday 29 November.