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Julie Christie

Producer, Executive

Julie Christie started out as a newspaper journalist, before moving into television in the late 80s. In 1991 she set up her own company, Touchdown Productions; fifteen years later she sold Touchdown to Dutch media group Eyeworks, although she stayed on as CEO of Eyeworks New Zealand until late 2012.

Growing up in Greymouth, Christie was one of seven children; her mother was widowed when she was five. Christie's first television job was with production company Communicado, as a production assistant on corporate videos for company boss Neil Roberts. Soon she was one of the company's most prolific producers, starting with TV series Mud and Glory: Great Rugby Stories. That was followed by one-off documentary Rachel Hunter: Cover Girl, for which Christie managed to persuade rocker Rod Stewart to do an interview.

After the documentary rated highly, Christie went and asked for a pay rise, but was turned down. So in 1991 she went and formed Touchdown Productions; within a few years she had grown it into New Zealand's largest producer of entertainment TV, with a thriving business in exporting programme formats. Christie told Her magazine that she became "a lot more staunch" about retaining intellectual property rights after "three programmes I had created were taken from me to be produced in-house at TVNZ". She also took on the long-running This is Your Life, winning two New Zealand television awards in the process.

By the time Eyeworks bought the company, Touchdown shows had been franchised to 29 countries. Breakthrough quiz show The Chair was its most successful export.

Many of Christie's programmes became staples of local television schedules — Changing Rooms, nine seasons plus of My House My Castle, Whose House Is It Anyway, export Treasure IslandDIY Rescue, Trading Places, and eleven years of Game of Two Halves. The company has also retooled overseas formats for local audiences, including time-travelling reality show Pioneer House, Captive and Dragons' Den, in which Christie was one of the those who decided which entrepreneurs to invest in.

Touchdown's shows made stars out of a number of presenters, including Matthew Ridge and Marc Ellis (Fresh-up in the Deep End) and April Ieremia. Some shows failed to find success (eg The Player, starring Nicky Watson); others dared to turn reality television on its head (Living the Dream, in which all the contestants but one were actors).

In 2001 Touchdown began to exploit its formats overseas. Its first American pitch — and sale — resulted in High Country Dance (which Christie directed, wrote and produced) about a single farmers’ event in Otago) being turned into format. An American version was produced for the Fox Network under the title Looking For Love: Bachelorettes in Alaska. "The US market is wonderfully open to ideas from outside," she has said. "They have a voracious appetite and unscripted television is a vital part of everyday life to them."

Further international success followed with productions of Treasure Island for RTE Ireland and Australia's Channel 7. Then came 2002 quiz show The Chair, which Touchdown produced in two versions that year: a Kiwi version hosted by Matthew Ridge, and one for ABC in America, led by tennis legend John McEnroe. Although the American version lasted only one season, the format went on to sell to 29 countries including the BBC, VOX in Germany and TF1 in France.

In later years Christie reunited with Robin Scholes from her Communicado days to set up a fiction department at Touchdown, and expand cautiously into drama — with 2008 dead husband series Burying Brian, and feature films The Tattooist, Mr Pip and The Hopes and Dreams of Gazza Snell.

Christie spent four years on the board of directors at MediaWorks, owners of TV3. She left in 2014 to concentrate on other ventures, but then in 2021, bought a majority stake in NHNZ; in early 2023 she purchased the remaining 40 percent of the company from Canada's Blue Ant Media. Christie has "always wanted to make television for the world in New Zealand, and that's what NHNZ have always done".

Christie has won two NZ Television Awards for Best Entertainment Programme, two Qantas Media Awards for Best Lifestyle series, and People's Choice Awards for Game of Two Halves and DIY Rescue. In 2012 she was named Best Director, for the Kiwi version of renovation show The Block. She took away WIFT's 2004 Award for International Television Achievement, and chaired the Government's Screen Production Industry Taskforce. She was also the first Kiwi recipient of the global Veuve Clicquot Award, celebrating female entrepreneurship.

In 2007 Christie was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to television. In 2017 she became a Dame Companion of the Order, for contributions to television and governance. Christie has done time on the boards of the 2011 Rugby World Cup board, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and the NZ Story Group, which oversees the Silver Fern trademark and helps Kiwi businesses promote themselves overseas.

Christie's business interests at one time included pay TV channel Living and Food (which she sold to Discovery in 2014), investments in two Auckland TV-themed restaurants and bars (The Foodstore and SkySport Grill) — plus a Fijian resort purchased for Australian reality series The Resort.

Profile updated on 8 February 2024

Sources include
Eyeworks website (broken link). Accessed 16 March 2015
Emily Brookes, 'I Wish ... Julie Christie' (Interview) - Sunday, 28 January 2024, page 3
Karen Tay, 'Small screen queen' (Interview) - The Sunday Star-Times, 29 November 2009
Matthew Theunisson, 'Queen's Birthday Honours: Reality TV queen Julie Christie is now a Dame' (Interview) - The NZ Herald, 5 June 2017
Diana Wichtel, 'Reality queen' (Interview) - The Listener, 10 June 2006 (issue 3448)
Unknown writer, 'Julie Christie' (Interview). Her magazine website (broken link). Accessed 16 March 2015
'Minister congratulates honours' recipients' (press release) Beehive website. Loaded 5 June 2017. Accessed 7 February 2024