Cliff Curtis

As an actor, Cliff Curtis has appeared in a string of local hits - Once Were Warriors, Whale Rider and The Piano - as well as carving a career as a sought-after character actor in Hollywood in movies like The Insider, Training Day, and Three Kings. He has worked with major directors from Martin Scorcese to David O. Russell and with actors Anthony Hopkins, Denzel Washington, and George Clooney.

Born in Rotorua in 1968, Curtis grew up on the Kapiti Coast, and took part in rock'n'roll dancing, kapa haka competitions and amateur theatre productions. Later he attended Wellington's Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School, then Teatro Dimitri Scoula in Switzerland. He acted in numerous theatre productions and played a singer in TV movie Undercover (1991), before making his feature film debut with a small role in The Piano (1993).

To date, Curtis has received three New Zealand Film and TV awards: Best Supporting Actor for portraying a charismatic dandy in Desperate Remedies (1994); Best Actor in Michael Hurst's Jubilee (2000) in the starring role as a procrastinator organising a small town jubilee; and Best Supporting Actor as Pai's father in Whale Rider (2002).

Curtis also took away a New Zealand TV award in 1999 for mini-series The Chosen, in which he played a priest caught up in a love triangle. After The Chosen, Curtis began to work increasingly in American film.

In 2004, he formed New Zealand film production company Whenua Films with his cousin Ainsley Gardiner. Whenua's mandate is to foster the telling of indigenous stories. With Gardiner, Curtis produced Taika Waititi's short film Tama Tū (2005), about a group of Māori soldiers finding relief during the tension of a WWII battle. The follow-up to Waititi's Oscar-nominated short Two Cars, One Night, Tama Tū screened at the Berlin and Sundance film festivals.

From 2005 to 2006 Whenua Films ran a New Zealand Film Commission Short Film scheme. The company executive-produced a number of successful shorts, including Coffee & Allah (Venice 2007), Hawaikii (Berlin Generation 2007) and Taua (Edinburgh 2007, Rotterdam 2008, Clermont Ferrand 2008).

In 2007, Curtis and Gardiner produced Taika Waititi's debut feature, geek comedy Eagle vs Shark, which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Later they joined with American Emanuel Michael to produce Waititi's follow-up Boy, which won a Grand Prize in its section at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival and become the most successful Kiwi comedy yet within four weeks of its New Zealand release date.

Cliff Curtis continues to alternate bringing Aotearoa stories to screen with roles in high-profile Hollywood films, where he is regularly called upon to play ‘ethnic' characters (including Latin American drug dealers and Iraqi freedom fighters).

His recent roles include cerebral sci-fi Sunshine, the fourth Die Hard flick, Live Free or Die Hard, and playing the villian in M Night Shyamalan's upcoming The Last Airbender. In 2009 he took one of the leading roles in American TV series Trauma, playing a cocky helicopter pilot.