Michelle Duff
BEFORE RYAN Gosling began steaming up screens in The Notebook and Blue Valentine, he was a floppy-haired teenager living in Auckland and shooting Young Hercules with his Kiwi mate Dean O’Gorman.
While it might be a stretch to say Gosling’s lead role as Hercules alongside O’Gorman’s sultry Iolaus shot him to the fame he enjoys today, it certainly set him up as a teen heartthrob, which is more than can be said for his previous role as child star in The Mickey Mouse Club.
It got Culture thinking: who else cut their teeth in the industry in New Zealand, using the fertile lands of Aotearoa as a training ground for Hollywood?
NZ on Screen content director Irene Gardiner says the late 90s saw many American and British television production studios choose to shoot here, with the tax breaks and lower wages making it attractive. New Zealand directors like Sir Peter Jackson and Jane Campion also set films here, bringing international casts and budgets to our shores.
‘‘There was a big wave of it in the days of Xena, Hercules and a few others,’’ Gardiner says. ‘‘Then it waned a bit, but the new screen incentives have seen it pick up again in the last year or so with the likes of Pete’s Dragon and Power Rangers.’’
This meant employment and opportunities for Kiwi actors too, launching the careers of Rose McIver ( The Piano, Power Rangers RPM), Melanie Lynskey ( Heavenly Creatures, The Frighteners), and Anna Hutchison ( Power Rangers Jungle Fury).
Producer Tom Hern, whose film The Dark Horse has won international acclaim, got one of his first career breaks on 1999 New Zealand-British coproduction The Tribe, also starring his now business partner James Napier Robertson.
The show gained a huge European fan base, and screened in more than 30 countries worldwide. For Hern, it was the perfect grounding in the industry. ‘‘Most of the actors have gone on to have great careers, we formed lasting friendships because we were teenagers working on this crazy show together – we were working on this professional show while we were still in high school.
‘‘It meant we spent hours on a film set, and for me that was invaluable for what I do now.’’
So who trod the boards (or should that be the misty mountains?) of New Zealand before going on to international acting careers? At the tender age of 18, a young Gosling moved to New Zealand to take up the lead as Hercules in the Fox Kids series Young Hercules. ‘‘He was here with his mum,’’ film publicist Sue May remembers. ‘‘Of course no-one knew who he was then.’’
In Young Hercules, Gosling starred alongside O’Gorman – whose latest roles include dwarf Fili in The Hobbit and George Lowe in yet-to-be-released miniseries Everest – and actor Kevin Smith, who later died after falling from a set in China.
According to People magazine, the Canadian told the Vancouver Sun in 2002 that the series was fun, but he quickly tired of it. ‘‘I started to care too much about it, and it wasn’t fun any more . . .I wanted to do films, have more Before she shot to worldwide fame as Rose in The Titanic, Kate Winslet became known for her role as a young, tormented New Zealander.
Winslet undoubtedly made her mark on Hollywood with her part in the film Heavenly Creatures. She played Juliet Hume, the Christchurch schoolgirl who colludes with Pauline Palmer to kill Pauline’s mother.
‘‘She wasn’t really Kate Winslet yet, she was just a young British actress – until she came out here,’’ NZ on Screen’s Irene Gardiner says.
It was the big screen debut for both Winslet and Kiwi co-star Melanie Lynskey. The film premiered to critical acclaim at the 1994 Venice International Film Festival, sparking off the careers of both young women.
It was also the first film with special effects produced by Weta Digital, with the company founded to work on the movie’s fantasy elements. Winslet was
awarded a British Empire award and named British Actress of the Year by London’s Critics’ Circle. Her next film would be Sense and Sensibility, which she starred in alongside Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant.