Mike Horton is an award-winning editor who has worked on some of New Zealand’s most beloved films. His CV includes classics Goodbye Pork Pie, Smash Palace, Utu and Once Were Warriors. Horton was nominated for an Oscar for editing Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers, and his one regret is not editing the final film of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Actor Theresa Healey first appeared on screen as a presenter on Play School. She won a wider audience during five years playing Nurse Carmen Roberts on Shortland Street.
Actor, acting teacher, and artist the late Grant Tilly played cow cockies, assassins, missionaries, and German villains in funny hats. And that’s not even counting his long-running stage career, which included a run of classic Kiwi plays, one of which became acclaimed movie Middle Age Spread.
Tandi Wright spent some of her childhood in the dressing room at Avalon TV Studios - waiting for her actor parents to finish work on Close to Home. But rather than encouraging her to follow suit, Wright insists they were always 'realistic about how nearly impossible it is to make a career out of acting'. She agrees - but seems to have pulled off the impossible anyway. Wright has been acting for television since the age of six, playing lead roles in some of New Zealand’s top productions including Shortland Street, Willy Nilly, Being Eve, Serial Killers, Outrageous Fortune, This Is Not My Life and Nothing Trivial. Her film credits include Not Only But Always, Black Sheep, and Out of the Blue.
After training to be a vet, cartoonist and writer Tom Scott ended up spending more time with creatures of the animated kind.
Roger Hall began his take over of the Kiwi stage in 1977 with Glide Time. Later the play inspired Gliding On, the first local sitcom to become a major hit.
TV executive Andrew Shaw has more than three decades of experience in the New Zealand TV industry, from being a teen heart-throb presenter, to directing and producing, to sitting on top of the heap as an executive at TVNZ.
Actor turned producer/director Julian Arahanga made his screen debut at age 11, starring alongside Annie Whittle in short film The Makutu on Mrs Jones. He shot to fame playing novice gang member Nig Heke in landmark movie Once Were Warriors, then went on to act in a number of films including Broken English. Since setting up his own production company Awa Films, Arahanga has directed and produced TV series Songs from the Inside and acclaimed documentary Turangaarere: The John Pohe Story.
Shortland Street producer Steven Zanoski’s first job in television was as a writer/reporter on kids programme What Now? He went on to become a storyliner for Shortland Street and eventually the programme’s producer. During his time as a writer on the show, he also penned the screenplay for one-off TV drama House of Sticks. Zanoski has also had a hand in the development of Outrageous Fortune and executive produced Mataku and Mercy Peak.
In 1969 Dave Smith acted in New Zealand's first televised comedy sketch show, In View of the Circumstances.
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