Liz Mullane is a New Zealand casting director who played a central role in assembling the cast of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, working across all three films, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, as the casting director for New Zealand-based talent. Her work helped bring together the trilogy’s enormous ensemble of both international stars and New Zealand-based actors, many of whom filled the many supporting and background roles required to populate Middle-earth’s many kingdoms and peoples.
Mullane has maintained a long-running collaborative relationship with Peter Jackson across nearly his entire directing career, working with him from his earlier film The Frighteners through to The Lord of the Rings, King Kong, The Lovely Bones, The Hobbit trilogy, and Mortal Engines.
Her behind-the-scenes contribution to one of the most successful and beloved film trilogies ever made has made her a significant, if less publicly visible, figure in the story of how Middle-earth came to the screen, and she remains a respected name among those interested in the full scope of talent, on screen and off, behind the trilogy’s success.
