Cliff Curtis

Cliff Curtis
Curtis in 2016
Born	Clifford Vivian Devon Curtis (1968-07-27) 27 July 1968 Rotorua, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand
Nationality	New Zealand
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1991–present
Spouse(s)	name unknown (m. 2009)
Children	3

Clifford Vivian Devon Curtis (born 27 July 1968) is a New Zealand actor. His film credits include Once Were Warriors (1994), Blow (2001), Whale Rider (2002), Live Free Or Die Hard (2007) and The Dark Horse (2014) for which he won the Best Performance by an Actor award at the 2014 Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Curtis had television series roles on NBC's Trauma and Body of Proof, and ABC's Missing. From 2015 to 2017, Curtis portrayed Travis Manawa on the AMC horror drama series Fear the Walking Dead.^[1]

Ethnically Māori, his many character roles have included a range of ethnicities, such as Latin American and Arab. Curtis is co-owner of the independent New Zealand production company Whenua Films.^[2]

Early life

Curtis, one of eight children, was born in Rotorua, in the North Island of New Zealand, and is the son of an amateur dancer.^[3] Curtis is of Māori descent; his tribal affiliations are Te Arawa^[4] and Ngāti Hauiti.

As a boy he studied mau rākau, a traditional Māori form of taiaha fighting, with Māori elder Mita Mohi on Mokoia Island,^[5] which nurtured his abilities as a performer in kapa haka. Curtis later performed as a breakdancer and then competitively in rock 'n' roll dance competitions.^[6] He received his secondary education at Western Heights High School, Rotorua.

New Zealand career

Curtis started acting in amateur productions of musicals Fiddler on the Roof and Man of La Mancha with the Kapiti Players and the Mantis Cooperative Theatre Company, before attending the New Zealand Drama School and Teatro Dimitri Scoula in Switzerland. He worked at a number of New Zealand theatre companies, including Downstage, Mercury Theatre, Bats Theatre, and Centre Point. His stage roles include Happy End, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Othello, The Cherry Orchard, Porgy and Bess, Weeds, Macbeth, Serious Money, and The End of the Golden Weather.

Curtis at the 2011 MIPCOM, in Cannes.

His first feature film role was a small part in the Oscar-nominated Jane Campion film The Piano. He went on to win attention in Once Were Warriors, one of the most successful films released on New Zealand screens; the line "Uncle f**ken Bully" referring to Curtis's character spoken by "Jake the Muss" Temuera Morrison, became one of New Zealand film's most memorable and quoted lines, as well as being part of the "Kiwiana" trend. He also played a seducer in the melodrama Desperate Remedies. In 2000 Curtis starred as family man Billy Williams in Jubilee,^[7] before playing father to the lead character in the international hit Whale Rider.

In 2004 with producer Ainsley Gardiner, Curtis formed independent film production company Whenua Films.^[2] The goals of the company are to support the growth of the New Zealand indigenous film-making scene, and support local short filmmakers. He and Gardiner were appointed to manage the development and production of films for the Short Films Fund for 2005-06 by the New Zealand Film Commission. They have produced several shorts under the new company banner, notably Two Cars, One Night, which received an Academy Award nomination in 2005, and Hawaikii by director Mike Jonathan in 2006. Both short films circulated through many of the prestigious international film festivals like the Berlinale.

At the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, Miramax Films bought US distribution rights to their first feature film, a relationship comedy titled Eagle vs Shark, directed by Taika Waititi. Waititi's follow-up feature Boy, also from Whenua Films, went on to become the highest grossing New Zealand film released on its own soil.^[8]

In 2014, Curtis played the lead role in The Dark Horse, which the National Radio review called "one of the greatest New Zealand films ever made."^[9] The New Zealand Herald praised him for his "towering performance"^[10] as real-life Gisborne speed chess player and coach Genesis Potini, who died in 2011. Curtis studied chess and deliberately put on weight for the role.

International career

Cliff Curtis at the 2015 San Diego Comic Con International.

Curtis has appeared in the films Martin Scorsese's Bringing Out the Dead (1999), Three Kings (1999), the drug drama Blow (2001) with Johnny Depp, Training Day (2001), Collateral Damage (2002), Live Free or Die Hard (2007), Sunshine (2007), Push (2009), and Colombiana (2011). In M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender (2010), he played the main villain, Fire Lord Ozai.^[11] Curtis portrayed Lt. Cortez in the film Last Knights (2015) and Jesus Christ in the film Risen (2016).^[12]

In the NBC TV drama Trauma,^[13] he played daredevil flight medic Reuben "Rabbit" Palchuck.^[14] Curtis was cast as Travis Manawa, a leading male role of the AMC TV series Fear the Walking Dead,^[15] the official spin-off of The Walking Dead.^[16]

In 2017, Curtis was cast as "Tonowari" and is set to appear in the four sequels to Avatar; see Avatar 2 and Avatar 3.^[17]

Personal life

Curtis guards his personal life closely. He married in late 2009^[18] in a lavish private ceremony at his home, and has three children.

Filmography

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cliff Curtis.

• Cliff Curtis on IMDb
• Cliff Curtis on NZ On Screen
• Slate video showing Curtis playing several ethnicities and nationalities