NZ search for blonde tot holds up Hollywood film shoot

Michael Fassbender.

A blonde baby girl is desperately needed to feature alongside Hollywood A-listers Michael Fassbender and Rachel Weisz in a film being made in the South Island.

Created by DreamWorks, The Light Between Oceans is being shot in Marlborough and Otago.

But the Herald understands filming has had to be put on hold until an 11- to 13-month-old-girl is found to play a young version of a child washed ashore on an isolated island and adopted by a husband and wife living there.

A call has gone out for a "happy and sociable" girl with "blonde or very little hair". The child and her family will need to travel to the South Island "for a few days" from tomorrow, and the role will be "well paid".

It is believed that twin girls originally hired did not work out as they could not be away from their parents without a pacifier.

The Light Between Oceans is based on a book of the same title by Australian writer M.L. Stedman, about a lighthouse keeper and his wife who live on a remote island off Western Australia.

The couple, played by Fassbender and Weisz, find a boat washed ashore carrying a dead man and an infant. They keep the child, but years later discover the consequences as the baby's real story unfolds.

According to the Internet Movie Database, the film is directed by Derek Cianfrance of Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines fame.

English actress Weisz won an Oscar for her supporting role in The Constant Gardener (2005) and also acted in Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones.

Fassbender's credits include Prometheus, X-Men: Days of Future Past and 12 Years a Slave, for which he received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.

Parts of The Light Between Oceans are also being shot in Tasmania.