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NeillRea

  • Actor
  • Casting agent
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Toi Whakaari graduate Neill Rea first won attention as the likeable if mildly-unhinged Scotty, one of the Dunedin students caught up in crime in hit movie Scarfies (1999). Since then Rea has embarked on a dual career as owner-operator of Auckland casting agency Fly Casting, while taking on a number of television  and voice roles of his own. His work as casting director includes 2012 TV movie What Really Happened - Votes for Women, and movie Kiwi Christmas. In 2014 he starred as Detective Mike Shepherd, in the first of multiple seasons of Prime’s feature-length crime series The Brokenwood Mysteries.

Screenography

The People We Love
2025 As: Craig Film
One Lane Bridge - First Episode
2020 Casting Director Television
One Lane Bridge
2020 - 2022 Casting Director Series
Ablaze
2019 Casting Television
Fresh Eggs
2019 Casting Television

Awards

2023 New Zealand Television Awards/Ngā Taonga Whakaata O Aotearoa
Nominated for Best Actor: for The Brokenwood Mysteries

“I was lucky enough to meet an Auckland-based police officer who offered to show me around. He was great — he wore a pink shirt and a mismatching tie, and if I could have distilled him and bottled him that would have been the character!”

— Neill Rea on researching his role for The Brokenwood Mysteries, Prime TV website

Related images

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The Scarfies cast pose outside the legendary student flat where much of the film is set. From left: Taika Waititi as Alex, Charlie Bleakley (Graham), Willa O'Neill (Emma), Ashleigh Seagar (Nicole) and (standing) Neill Rea as Scott.
Kindly supplied by Rob Sarkies
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The core cast of Scarfies. Back row, standing left to right: Neill Rea as Scott and Taika Waititi as Alex. Seated, left to right: Willa O'Neill as Emma, Charlie Bleakley as Graham and Ashleigh Seagar as Nicole.
Kindly provided by Rob Sarkies
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Neill Rea and Willa O'Neill in a scene from movie Scarfies (1999).