Articles

What would you prefer to do if you had the choice?

Acting wise I love doing anything. I love being an actor. It’s completely different than being behind the scenes and I’ve done a lot of both of them now and they’re very different vehicles. But the thing that I’ve found is that I actually get a lot more work doing other stuff aside from acting. And acting will always be my first passion, but I just got tired of waiting around for the phone to ring. [laughs] And rather than letting that get me down I decided that I didn’t want to be on this roller coaster ride of letdowns. I’d rather just be part of something and doing anything than doing nothing at all.

Is there any particular type of role that you really want to play?

I’d love to be in a film because I haven’t actually done many of them. I’ve done more television series work. I think sometimes you read a script and you can actually picture the character and know it. The performances I’m happy with myself, personally, are when you can actually feel it, and it’s still quite very different from you. So when anything like that comes along I’m quite happy with it, but I can’t put it down to any one thing. And there are some scripts that you read, or parts that you go on audition for, and you’re thinking ’I don’t get this.’ And obviously I never got them. [laughs] But yeah, I’m just waiting for the next thing that I actually really do GET. And I can picture in my head and get excited about it because I’ll see 20 million different ways of playing it. So, to be very vague. [laughs] Very, very vague…I’m just waiting for the next great opportunity.

I want to ask you about the entertainment field as a whole in New Zealand. First Renaissance Pictures began making shows there, and now you have a number of big budget movies coming in to film. However, and I could be mistaken on this, I’ve heard that some of the tax laws no longer make it as inviting for foreign companies to come in. What is the feeling among the performers in New Zealand? Do you have a positive outlook for the future?

You know for the last 5 years I’ve been in the industry it’s like every year you hear people talking and the rumors are always: it’s going to be a great year this year. It’s going to be great with all the stuff coming down here. But you know, Peter Jackson definitely made a HUGE impression. And that year was good when the Oscars had something like twelve awards going to New Zealanders. I mean that was MASSIVE for us. It was. Absolutely. All of a sudden, everyone knew about New Zealand and it was extremely beneficial. So I think now…everyone’s been talking about things that are going to happen for the last long time, but now I really feel like we’re actually closer to that than ever before. I’m not sure about the laws but there are still huge benefits and there’s still huge appeal. And with people like Peter making things, it’s getting a lot easier and things are more attainable. People are more familiar. So I’m pretty optimistic about it. [laughs] I’m optimistic.

part 6