Rolleston talks of painful lesson
‘‘I was just a young teenage lad who thought he was invincible,’’ says James Rolleston quietly. ‘‘And I learned I wasn’t.’’
Rolleston should be in Los Angeles now, trying for his big break in the United States. The logical next step for a 19-year-old actor who has already made five major New Zealand features, starting as an 11-year-old in Boy.
Instead, he is learning to walk and talk again; living with the constant pain in his hip, the livid scars on his legs.
On July 26, a car crash outside Rolleston’s home town of Opotiki left him in a five-week coma.
Rolleston now has only three clear memories of 2016. There’s working on the forthcoming film Pork Pie, although he couldn’t tell you when that production wrapped; a cruise he took in February, or perhaps it was March, and the premiere of the movie The Rehearsal, two nights before the accident.
There’s a vague recollection of driving from Auckland to Opotiki, then nothing. When he awoke, five weeks had passed by.
Rolleston appeared in the Opotiki District Court yesterday on a charge of dangerous driving. The case was remanded without plea until February.
Rolleston’s management say alcohol was not a factor in the crash. Rolleston himself cannot remember anything about it, even after revisiting the scene.
From what he’s been told, he made it back to Opotiki. He and Kaleb Maxwell then drove to visit a friend who lived on the outskirts. They were driving back when Rolleston lost control and crashed into a bridge.
‘‘I woke up one morning having no idea where I was, or how I got there.’’ - NZ