My first job was... stacking shelves at Matamata New World. I then graduated to working in the deli. I loved wearing the hairnets and getting a pay rise of 5c an hour that this promotion afforded me.
It taught me… how to look busy when there was nothing to do. How to sneakily eat shaved ham and mass-produced potato salad in the coolstore. How to unclog pipes (the cabinet display drainage was forever getting clogged with stray cheerios). How to get through a shift with a horrific hangover and how to hide from your manager.
My big break came… I'm still yearning for my big break and am losing sleep that it hasn't come yet. But my first foray into professional film and television was a Canadian beer commercial. I was 19 at the time. I showed up to the call-back auditions, which were in front of all the producers and beer representatives. I was asked if I could do group waterskiing pyramids. I scoffed and said "of course not", to which they queried "well why did you write that you could on your audition form?" Somehow I got the job (thankfully not the skiing part, just a buffoon drinking at a party/perving on a hot chick) and loved being the centre of attention. I guess it was significant because I proved to myself that I could do a satisfactory job on screen because the ad was actually screened.
The last job I quit was… I actually haven't quit any job, I don't think. I've been fired and asked to leave several times, though. My worst job was trying to sell shoddy retractable hoses and floral aquariums at LynnMall at Christmas. I hate talking to strangers at the best of times, let alone sell to them. So my boss asked me to leave. I also had a job looking after all the animals at Auckland museum. It was 10 hours of work a week but 100 hours of anxiety. You'd show up and the fish would be dead, or the bees were starving, or the katipo spiders had escaped and couldn't be found. It just wasn't worth it.
The most famous person I've ever met is… I met Rupert Everett in London and tried flirting with him. He wasn't having it. Chris Martin of Coldplay fame came into a costume store I was working at in London. I was relegated to fetching more novelty cigars from downstairs before I could initiate a friendship. By the time I'd come back, he was gone. I tried to chill with Dizzee Rascal backstage at Splore this year. He wasn't having it. I tried to have a laugh with Lorde backstage at the music awards last year. She was not impressed with me either.
