Lars Ulrich

Lars Ulrich is a Danish-American musician, songwriter, record producer, and businessman whose four-decade music career — primarily as the co-founding drummer of American heavy-metal band Metallica — has produced one of the defining bodies of work in late-20th and early-21st-century international heavy-metal music. He was born Lars Ulrich on December 26, 1963, in Gentofte, Denmark, into a Danish-Jewish musical-and-tennis family. His father Torben Ulrich was a Danish professional tennis player who played the 1959 Wimbledon Championships men's-singles tournament, and his mother Lone Sylvester-Hvid was a Danish-Jewish homemaker.

His education at Newport Harbor High School in Newport Beach, California (after his 1980 family relocation from Copenhagen to Los Angeles to support his tennis career as a competitive junior tennis player) — where he met his future Metallica co-founder James Hetfield — launched his 1981 transition from competitive tennis to professional music. His late-1981 tennis-career conclusion and his subsequent October 28, 1981 founding of Metallica with James Hetfield in Los Angeles launched his American heavy-metal-band career.

His 1983 first Metallica album Kill 'Em All — released July 25, 1983 by Megaforce Records — launched the 1980s American thrash-metal genre alongside fellow 1983 thrash-metal acts Slayer, Anthrax, and Megadeth. The 1986 third Metallica album Master of Puppets — released March 3, 1986 — has been continuously cited as one of the foundational documents of 1980s American thrash-metal music. The 1991 fifth Metallica album Metallica (the "Black Album") — released August 12, 1991 — has sold over 32 million copies worldwide and remains one of the bestselling albums of all time.

His 2000 Napster-and-Metallica copyright-litigation public profile — across his April 2000 federal-court filing of the copyright-infringement lawsuit against the file-sharing service Napster (one of the foundational digital-music-piracy court cases) — shaped early-21st-century international digital-music-licensing law. His subsequent Metallica career has produced 11 studio albums across 1983–2023 — including Death Magnetic (2008), Hardwired... to Self-Destruct (2016), and 72 Seasons (2023). He has been with American actress Jessica Miller since 2007.

His name Lars derives from the Scandinavian form of Laurence (from the Latin Laurentius meaning "from Laurentum"). Lars has been climbing in American naming since the 1980s.