Annie Whittle

Annie Whittle admits that her career has had many moments of good luck. But Whittle's good luck is the type that comes of trying - and being good at - many things. Whittle has won music awards, piloted planes, been a champion fencer, danced ballet, and acted in Kiwi classics A Week of It, The Makutu on Mrs Jones, The Billy T James Show and Outrageous Fortune.

Born in Lancashire, England, Whittle's family emigrated to Christchurch when she was three. Whittle later "fell into entertainment", after deciding against a career in teaching or academia. Having started singing at high school, she made her television debut as a member of folk group the Sinclair Trio, on sixties magazine show Town and Around.

Halfway through a languages degree, Whittle exited Christchurch for her O.E. She spent four years touring Europe with a jazz band, then two years playing rock in Australia. Back in New Zealand, her entry in a TV music quest, singing a tune penned by a Wellington housewife, kickstarted a trail of music awards, gold singles, popular albums, and the 1978 TV special Annie.

Stage two of Whittle's career had already begun. After winning an audition to become the "token female" in a Christchurch satirical review group, Whittle found herself joining them in sketch show A Week of It. The show won her a Feltex Award for best actress, and enduring fame as blonde barmaid Charlene, a character she grew to loathe.

She met future husband, director Bruce Morrison, when they worked together on the 1978 dramatized documentary Wreck of the General Grant, based on a ship that sank south of Bluff. They later worked together on the short The Sea Child (Whittle co-produced, and composed music) and trainspotters will have noticed her screaming inside a car in Morrison's movie Queen City Rocker.

Over the next few years Whittle concentrated on live theatre, though she found time to star in two noteworthy shorts: the surreal, dialogue-lite Blackhearted Barney Blackfoot, and Larry Parr's comic-drama Makutu on Mrs Jones. Whittle played the title role of a rural mail woman, who refuses to kow-tow to a local tohunga.

In 1984 she made her big screen debut in Melanie Read's feminist thriller Trial Run. Whittle played a nature photographer living in an isolated cottage, who finds herself stalked by an anonymous figure.

Television suddenly remembered who she was, and Whittle returned to sketch comedy as part of the cast of the high-rating Billy T. James Show. In 1989 she starred in urban morality piece The Shadow Trader. Whittle and Miranda Harcourt co-starred as chalk and cheese café-owners, facing off against a scheming property developer who fantasises about wrecking balls. Harcourt would memorably describe their laughter-filled working relationship as "like going to work with a whoopee cushion every day".

Whittle has also been a presenter on a range of television programmes, appearing on episodes of the longrunning Heartland, and eighties magazine show Then Again. She has also written and presented for TV3 gardening show The Living Earth, and the long-running Holiday.

In 2001 Whittle began a four year stint on the "glossy sausage factory" of Shortland Street. She auditioned for one role, but ended up playing Chris Warner's bubbly PA Barb Heywood, who battles on despite blindings, a drug-addicted son and a boyfriend whose nickname is ‘Sticky'.

After leaving Shortland, Whittle's agent rang to ask if she wanted to audition for a film playing Anthony Hopkins' girlfriend. Whittle won the role, and The World's Fastest Indian became one of New Zealand's most successful films. But the keen competition for the role, and lack of work for older women, led to a decision to devote more time to her second job, as a veterinary nurse.

Yet Whittle has refused to throw in the towel. Since Fastest Indian she has starred opposite Kiwi acting legend George Henare in Maori Television comedy Kai Korero, and appeared on episodes of Outrageous Fortune, where her character had what it takes to win the attention of the unstoppable Grandpa West. In 2009 she took a leading role in Fiona Samuel's tele-movie Piece of my Heart, playing a woman dealing with the fallout of having been forced to give up her child as a teenager.