Weekend Rewind: New Zealand child stars

A scene from the movie Whale Rider.

Film director Taika Waititi’s announcement that he is looking for a teenage actress to star in his latest movie gets NZ On Screen Content Director Irene Gardiner thinking about New Zealand’s strong tradition of child stars.

New Zealand's child stars have made quite an impact. Anna Paquin won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in The Piano; and Keisha Castle-Hughes was nominated for one for her role in Whale Rider. James Rolleston and Te Aho Eketone-Whitu delighted audiences in Taika Waititi's Boy in 2010, and now Waititi is looking for another young star for his new movie Hunt for the Wilderpeople, with the search on for a Maori girl aged between 11 and 15.

Greer Robson's heart-melting performance in classic New Zealand film Smash Palace back in 1981 was our first really striking role from a child actor in a Kiwi movie. She played Georgie, a young girl caught up in a tug-of-love between her estranged parents. The scene where she is celebrating her birthday in the bush after being snatched by her desperate father is a particularly fine piece of acting from both Robson and Lawrence.

You can view that excerpt here:

Robson went on to appear in Kiwi film Starlight Hotel as a teenager, and also continued her acting and performing career as an adult, with a long-running role on Shortland Street. She has also worked as a lawyer.

Twelve years after Robson's appearance in Smash Palace, 11-year-old Anna Paquin came from nowhere to win an Academy Award for her role as Flora, alongside Holly Hunter, Sam Neill and Harvey Keitel, in Jane Campion's The Piano. Paquin has gone on to have a successful international acting career, with roles in movies and as the star of the long-running HBO television series True Blood.

You can see Paquin in an excerpt from The Piano here (warning, it's the scene with the axe and the fingers):

2002 film Whale Rider tells the tale of a young Maori girl who challenges tradition and embraces the past in order to find the strength to lead her people forward. The lead role of Pai was played by newcomer Keisha Castle-Hughes, who followed Paquin in being nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards. Castle-Hughes missed out on the award, but has also gone on to work in Hollywood, and is currently appearing in hit TV series Game of Thrones.

Watch Keisha Castle-Hughes in the trailer for Whale Rider here:

Veteran NZ actress Jennifer Ward-Lealand also began her long and varied career with acting roles as a child and a teenager. In 1972 she made a brief appearance as a young girl in the controversial one-off television drama Gone Up North For a While. Made by the National Film Unit, and directed by Paul Maunder, the ground-breaking film told the story of a young unmarried mother who decides to keep her baby. Paul Holmes also features, as a moustached young lothario. Ward-Lealand's brief appearance is at about 3'45' into part four.

View Gone Up North for a While here:

Another Kiwi actor currently doing well internationally is Martin Henderson, who also started out as a child actor in television. His screen debut was in kidult thriller Strangers in 1989, some years before his long-running Shortland Street role as Stuart Nielsen.

View episode one of Strangers here.