Alex Casey takes a look back at the long history of Aotearoa’s child stars shining on the world stage and asks: are they our greatest export? 

If you too feel as if your sense of national pride is sinking into oblivion like a pavlova left outside in the forthcoming hottest summer on record, I can recommend escaping into pop culture for some much-needed patriotism. Head to the cinemas where half the cast of Moana 2, currently the number one movie in the world, are New Zealanders. Pop on Netflix and see Thomasin McKenzie in Joy. Julian Dennison is apparently the best part of A24’s big new comedy Y2K, and Nell Fisher is about to blow up in Stranger Things S5. 

We are punching well above our weight in Hollywood for a tiny Briscoes piss country, but closer analysis reveals another interesting trend in this crop of exports: many had star turns long before their 18th birthday. Julian Dennison was just 14 when he played wise-cracking Ricky Baker in The Hunt For The Wilderpeople, soon catapulted into the Deadpool multiverse at 16. Thomasin McKenzie was 15 when she made us all cry as Pixie on Shortland Street, and 17 in her award-winning role in Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace. 

Nell Fisher is the freshest of the bunch at just 13 years old (she is not New Zealand-born, but she has said we can claim her as our own, so push on this 33 year-old must). She was 10 years old when she screamed her way through the New Zealand-filmed Evil Dead Rise, and 12 when she starred alongside Elijah Wood in this year’s local family adventure film Bookworm (I tried to get an interview with her about the Canterbury Panther but she was a bit busy on a top secret new project, later revealed to be season five of Stranger Things). 

We could go back further and talk about KJ Apa, who had a two-year stint as a teenager on Shortland Street before hitting the big time as Archie in Riverdale. There’s Rose McIver, who was just 17 in Maddigan’s Quest, eventually leading her to the top billing in American sitcoms iZombie and Ghosts. Melanie Lynskey was 15 years old when she starred in Heavenly Creatures, and went on to massive roles in Two and Half Men, Yellowjackets, The Last of Us, The Tattooist of Auschwitz and, of course, Coyote Ugly. 

Keep digging and the local young blood to Hollywood pipeline simply overfloweth. Frankie Adams and Martin Henderson were both teens on Shortland Street before being hurtled into huge US television roles in Grey’s Anatomy and The Expanse, respectively (Adams is also in the upcoming live action Moana). Michelle Ang was 15 when she braved post-apocalyptic teen series The Tribe, later returning to a futuristic zombie hellscape in AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead as an adult (which she also got an Emmy nomination for). 

And that’s all before we’ve even mentioned The Big Two. The square pegs in the round holes. The tiny children in floppy beaded berets at The Oscars. Anna Paquin was just 11 years old when she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1994 for her role in The Piano (second youngest winner behind Tatum O’Neal in 1974). A decade later, 13-year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes also made history as the youngest person to ever to be nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award (usurped in 2012 by Quvenzhané Wallis, but still).

As you can see (thank you Shanti Mathias for taking time out from writing about plastic pollution etc to help me with this), it’s a very strong showing from Aotearoa when it comes to small children vs large gold statuettes. Despite only making up 0.06% of the world’s population, we represent 15% of all actors under the age of 14 nominated for an Academy Award. And if we look at the total number of New Zealanders to ever receive an Academy Award nomination for acting, and we dutifully ignore Russell Crowe, the results are 100% kids. 

What is remarkable about our local child stars is not just the calibre of their early performances, but their longevity in Hollywood. While Ryan Gosling, Ethan Hawke and Jodie Foster have survived and thrived, there’s just as many young American stars that have flamed out. Sometimes they step aside to make way for an inflammable younger sibling (the Culkins, the Olsen Twins), sometimes they swap acting for stock cars (Frankie Muniz), sometimes they disappear for decades to simply grow a big beard (Haley Joel Osment). 

Keisha Castle-Hughes in particular has spoken candidly about the pitfalls of finding fame at a young age. “It was an incredible time for me when I was young, but really overwhelming,” she told Stuff. “I don’t think anyone really knew how to handle it. It all happened really quickly.” Hounded by local paparazzi so intensely that she had to give a fake name when she went into hospital to give birth in 2007, she left Aotearoa at 18 and went on to get roles in Star Wars, Game of Thrones and now is four seasons into FBI: Most Wanted.

Paquin too secured a raft of great adult roles following her stratospheric early success – not that it was something she pursued very hard in her youth. “I was 11. I wanted to go back to school and be with my friends,” she told Interview of her Oscar win. Even still, the New Zealand child star elixir remained potent within and Paquin would eventually star in everything from Almost Famous to Squid and the Whale, X Men to Scream, The Irishman to True Blood (for which she won an Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in 2007).

So why is it that this tiny island nation is so bloody good at producing such high quality, long lasting, free range young actors?

I asked around industry-adjacent people, and the primary reason that came up time and time again was this: Aotearoa makes a hell of a lot of good movies with kids and teenagers at the centre of the story, hurtling young actors into the cinema of unease instead of the Disney Channel. NZ On Screen has a whole collection saying as much, including Boy, Rain, The Changeover, Alex and Vigil. This year alone, we’ve had at least three coming-of-age titles released in We Were Dangerous, Bookworm and Head South. 

In Alistair Fox’s book Coming-of-Age Cinema in New Zealand, Vigil filmmaker Vincent Ward reckoned childhood was one of the most common themes in our writing. “Perhaps this is due to the relative newness of the national identity, and ‘rites of passage’ stories reflect this coming of age,” he said. Fox also noted how our coming-of-age films are some “the most esteemed and successful films to be made in New Zealand, attesting to the vitality and creative inventiveness of what is still a relatively young industry.”

So our child star success could be because our stories all skew young. It could also be down to… Shortland Street. Henderson, McKenzie, Adams and Apa in particular all had significant stints in Ferndale as young people before being catapulted to the big time. “When I’m talking to young people about acting as a career, I tell them Shortland Street is the most successful graduation programme that we’ve got in NZ,” Miranda Harcourt, acting royalty and mother of Thomasin McKenzie told The Big Idea in 2022. 

“We certainly wouldn’t be where we are, joining the party at such a high level and punching above our weight in the global TV and filmmaking market with success at the Oscars and Emmys without Shortland Street.” 

There’s another obvious reason for why our young people go the distance in Hollywood: they get to come home, touch grass and have a bloody L&P on the beach. Where young stars in the US can all too easily lose their grip on reality, New Zealanders can always flee Tinseltown for Titirangi, just like Castle-Hughes. “The things that I think I ran away from have become the things that I now crave and miss the most,” she told Stuff. “The part of home that always felt boring or stifling has become the thing that I really want in my life.”

Scour any interview and you’ll find similar sentiments. McKenzie is looking forward to visiting Princess Bay when she comes home for summer. McIver misses the black sands of Piha and the New Zealand sense of humour. Melanie Lynskey felt the pull to move home while shooting here during the “warm and lovely” months last year: “I was like, ‘What am I doing? Why don’t we live here?’” Even after condemning our tall poppy attitude, KJ Apa still pops back to film drunk people in wheelie bins every now and again. 

Whatever the reason for our child star success rate, it’s worth holding onto as a point of pride in these grim times. For too long we have focussed on the importance of exports such as concentrated milk, meat, butter, and rough wood, and neglected the value of a wobbly-chinned 11-year-old doing a speech in a school hall, or a nine-year-old wearing a powerful bonnet on a West Coast beach. And if that’s not enough to give you a small burst of hope, consider this: our next big Hollywood superstar could be taking their first steps right now.