A STAR IS BORN
From NZ to Hollywood’s hottest property
A young actress tipped as our next brightest star says it’s nerve-wracking having her new movie screened for her nearest and dearest.
“It’s stressful, because I really hope they like it,” Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie said. Speaking to the Herald on Sunday at the premiere of Leave No Trace at the Civic in Auckland last night, McKenzie said returning to New Zealand from the Czech Republic had felt great.
“It was kind of like, ‘ah, I’m home again’.”
Dressed in a star-printed wrap dress, white sneakers and a mustard jacket, the 18-yearold was enthusiastic talking about the new film, and even more enthusiastic when she spotted friends wandering into the Civic for the premiere. McKenzie recently wrapped up filming in Prague for another movie — Jojo Rabbit
— and had only a short window to catch up with friends and family.
Directed by Taika Waititi — who McKenzie called “a genius” — Jojo Rabbit has been described as a World War II satire.
Waititi was one of several Kiwis working on the film set, McKenzie said.
“We’re taking over the world, a little bit,” she said.
It wasn’t McKenzie’s first big red carpet experience — Leave No Trace premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah earlier this month.
Directed by Debra Granik, the film is about a girl named Tom living off the grid with her father Will (Ben Foster) in a Portland park.
She forages for mushrooms and finds joy reading an old encyclopedia.
But after she and Will are discovered, she begins to re-evaluate her upbringing — and understand the PTSD from which her father is suffering.
McKenzie has appeared in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies,
and the Margaret Mahy adaptation The Changeover, but Granik’s Leave No Trace is her first American film. The Changeover was directed by McKenzie’s mother, actress Miranda Harcourt, and her father Stuart McKenzie.
On Monday she crosses the Ditch to begin filming a new movie about infamous outlaw Ned Kelly.