Miranda Harcourt: from Gloss newbie to acting coach...

Miranda Harcourt got her screen break playing the bitchy Gemma on iconic 80s soap Gloss. Since then the versatile Harcourt has hardly taken a breath — directing and mentoring young actors, as well as acting in prisons, tele-movies Clare and Tangiwai - A Love Story, and her husband Stuart McKenzie's feature For Good, among many other roles.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Harcourt talks about:

• The joys of playing Gemma on Gloss, as the character journeyed from being a "really nice girl from Hamilton" to a "bitch from hell"
• The over the top reactions of some Gloss viewers when they met Harcourt in person
• Reinvention in London
• Interviewing prisoners about violent crime and murder for play Verbatim, which Harcourt performed in many prisons (as seen in documentary Act of Murder)
• The genesis of award-winning feature film For Good — directed by Harcourt’s husband Stuart McKenzie — the tale of a woman’s fascination with a teenager’s abduction and murder
• Playing Phillida Bunkle in tele-movie Clare, based on the disastrous gynaecological study at Auckland National Women’s Hospital
• Her time as a "terrible" student at New Zealand Drama School, and her return to spend seven years at the school as Head of Acting
• Embracing variety in her career, including her work as acting coach on Yvonne Mackay’s series Kaitangata Twitch

This video was first uploaded on 15 August 2009, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Interview - Ian Pryor. Camera and Editing - Alex Backhouse