New Zealand actors Josh McKenzie and Luke Patrick land Hollywood roles – Spy

Josh McKenzie will star in the new NBC crime drama series The Hunting Party. Photo / Nicholas Coghlan

Kiwi actors Josh McKenzie and Luke Patrick have scored gritty new Hollywood roles.

Two former Shortland Street stars, Luke Patrick and Josh McKenzie, have scored fantastic new dramatic roles in the US.

Patrick, 38, who played Frank Warner on the iconic soap for five years, has just come off filming a movie in Adelaide with Entourage star Jeremy Piven. “Jeremy was the nicest, most funny kind-hearted actor to work with,” Patrick tells Spy.

The pair are starring in the thriller Numbered Lives, a movie set in a mysterious facility, where the medical research is dark. “It’s almost like a prison,” says Patrick. “My character Lukas has a split personality built up from childhood trauma. He’s the warden’s second in charge, he explains, “and sees him more of a father figure in a world where patients are treated like lab rats to meet the clinic’s corporate demands.”

Patrick says Piven plays the head of the corporation and the pair have a climactic confrontation scene, and Patrick is pretty chuffed with the results.

Luke Patrick will return to New Zealand after a stint in the US.

Since leaving Shorty, Patrick has enjoyed time with his family in South Australia, being an acting coach, as well as working and spending time in Sydney and in the US.

Patrick is excited to be coming back to New Zealand at the end of winter to live; an older, wiser and more spiritually aware Patrick will return with the intention of acting, coaching and hosting radio, as well as getting amongst the action in the many New Zealand productions on the burn.

“I will definitely visit the team at Shorty, I can’t wait to reconnect, New Zealand is my spiritual home, the people are the best in the world and I have such great friends there.”

McKenzie, who is most remembered here for his role in TVNZ’s drama series Filthy Rich as bad boy Josh Jnr, has been living in Melbourne filming three seasons of hit US NBC series La Brea.

America has noticed McKenzie’s talent, and he has just been announced in a starring role in new NBC crime drama series The Hunting Party. McKenzie will play Shane Florence in the new high-concept show, which centres around a small team of investigators who track down and capture the most dangerous killers in the US, all of whom have escaped a top-secret prison.

McKenzie, 34, will film the series in Vancouver. His character Shane is a former soldier in Iraq and a prison guard at a highly classified facility. Shane is described as selfless, sincere and charismatic.

“I’m very grateful to have been trusted with this role and feel very lucky for the opportunity to work on such an exciting project in Vancouver,” McKenzie tells Spy.

“I will be working with a wonderful team of creators - some of whom I’ve had the joy of working with before,” he says.

“As my grandmother, who passed in December, told me when I booked my first job at 18, ‘Now the work begins’.”

McKenzie will next appear in the second season of Aussie legal drama The Twelve, in which fellow Kiwi Sir Sam Neill stars.