Oliver Driver: Theatresports, Shortland Street, and beyond...

Interview – 2009

Even as a schoolboy, Oliver Driver knew he wanted to be an actor. Driver has gone on to a varied career in theatre, television and film. The role of male nurse Mike Galloway in Shortland Street made Driver a famous face in New Zealand; he has also appeared in The Strip, Serial Killers, and Letter to Blanchy, and movies Topless Women Talk about Their Lives, Magik and Rose, Black Sheep, and A Death in the Family. Driver appeared as the villainous Mr Wilberforce in the movie version of Under the Mountain.

In this ScreenTalk, Driver talks about:

Leaving school and jumped into theatresports
The love he has for directing theatre, and the creative process involved in getting a script to the stage
How City Life gave him his first and most memorable TV experience
Hosting Sunrise and the pressure of live television, and how he initially thought the job was to "out Paul Henry, Paul Henry"
His thoughts on being a so-called sell-out; such as for doing Warehouse ads and hosting Frontseat
Playing the role of Mr Wilberforce in Under the Mountain and how a prosthetic face brought him to tears

This video was first uploaded on 25 July 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, Camera and Editing - Andrew Whiteside

It's taken me a long time to kind of come to the point where I can call myself an artist, and not cringe about that — because I think everybody thinks by artist you have to be a visual artist or something like that; whereas I now consider that's the best descriptive of what it is I do.
– Oliver Driver

Oliver's Full Profile