Cliff Curtis

Rotorua's chameleon face

Cliff Curtis has the kind of look that confuses casting directors in Los Angeles. He was born in Rotorua in 1968, and his Māori heritage allowed him to move from one ethnicity to another for three decades without anyone questioning his origins on screen.

He made his debut with a brief role in The Piano in 1993. But his performance as Bully in Once Were Warriors in 1994 is what made his name in New Zealand's film industry. That raw, violent film showed a reality Hollywood barely knew.

The passport was the least of it.

His arrival in the United States came with a strange premise. Curtis could play a Latino gangster in Training Day in 2001 or an Arab soldier in Three Kings in 1999. Producers were looking for that physical ambiguity that let him fit into any fictional geopolitical conflict.

In 2002, he starred in Whale Rider. Here he returned to his roots to play an absent father and artist in a Māori community struggling to preserve its identity. The film grossed 41 million dollars on a minimal budget.

The business behind the camera

Curtis never settled for waiting for his agent's call. In 2004, he founded Whenua Films with producer Ainsley Gardiner. His goal was to finance stories that put the spotlight on New Zealand's Indigenous talent.

He produced Eagle vs Shark in 2007 and Boy in 2010. Both films were directed by Taika Waititi. His time as a producer was key to helping New Zealand cinema find its own tone of dark humor and melancholy.

And the gamble paid off.

Curtis soon understood that the industry doesn't hand out positions of power. So he decided to build them himself while still taking roles in big productions like Live Free or Die Hard in 2007. The actor juggled offices in Wellington with high-budget movie sets.

The era of global franchises

Mass recognition came with television. In 2015, he took on the role of Travis Manawa in Fear the Walking Dead. The series gave him a global visibility that art-house cinema could not offer at the time.

He filmed 50 episodes of the series before his character disappeared in 2017. But this work was the necessary bridge into James Cameron's universe. In 2022, he played Tonowari in Avatar: The Way of Water.

Filming the Avatar sequels required Curtis to learn advanced freediving techniques. He spent months training to hold his breath underwater during the motion-capture shoots. It is a technical process that will continue throughout the filming of the saga's upcoming installments.

In 2024, he appeared in the film Ka Whawhai Tonu. This historical production depicts New Zealand's wars of 1864 from a strictly Māori perspective. The film's budget was estimated at around 7 million New Zealand dollars.