Dame Miranda Harcourt, Thomasin McKenzie

Dame Miranda Harcourt

Miranda graduated from Toi Whakaari, New Zealand Drama School in 1984, and would later return as head of the acting department for seven years in the late 2000s. Her eclectic acting career began with a starring role as the villain Gemma in Gloss, an iconic 80s New Zealand television programme touted as New Zealand’s answer to Dynasty, followed by many award-winning stage and screen roles as an actor and a director.

In 1990, she spent a year at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama, exploring drama therapy in psychiatric institutions, with the deaf, and in prisons. She returned to collaborate with writer William Brandt on Verbatim, a solo play portraying nine characters centred around the family of a violent offender, which played in prisons, schools, and theatres across New Zealand, and at the Edinburgh Film Festival. She also worked as a drama therapist and started a literacy programme at the Arohata Women’s Prison in Wellington.

Miranda is proud of her pioneering work with verbatim theatre in Aotearoa New Zealand.

“It doesn’t matter who I’m working with, I still use the magic of verbatim text, the poetry of the way real people speak – and that’s my magic tool. It’s still something I’m very passionate about and use every day in my work as an acting coach.”

In 1993, Miranda helped a young Melanie Lynskey with her audition for Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (1994), which opened the door to a new career as a screen acting coach. She has worked with directors and actors from across the globe on films including Bridge to Terabithia (2007), Jane Campion’s Bright Star (2009), The Lovely Bones (2009), Lion (2015) and Foe (2021). In 2017, Nicole Kidman made a point of thanking Miranda in her Emmy Award acceptance speech for Big Little Lies.

Miranda and her husband, director/playwright Stuart McKenzie have collaborated on many projects, including, Voiceover (1997), Portraits (1995), For Good (2003), Flowers from my Mother’s Garden (1998), Biography of My Skin (2010), The Changeover (2017) and Transmission (2022). Between them, they have four children, Sara, Peter, Thomasin, and Davida.

In 2023, Miranda was named a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the screen industry and theatre.

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Thomasin McKenzie

Born on 26 July 2000, Thomasin McKenzie appeared in her first film at the age of seven, alongside her brother Peter. She featured as Astrid in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) along with her mother Miranda. In 2015, she appeared in Shortland Street as beloved cancer patient Pixie Hannah, and the following year she played Lucy Lewis in the comedy web series Lucy Lewis Can’t Lose.

It was her appearance in Leave No Trace (2018) directed by Debra Granik that drew global attention. Playing a 13-year-old girl living off the grid in the Oregon forest with her combat-veteran father, Thomasin won the National Board of Review Award for Breakthrough Performance. Since then she has been hard at work, with roles as Queen Phillipa of Denmark in Netflix’s The King, and as Elsa in Taika Waititi’s Academy Award-winning Jojo Rabbit, as well as in Old (2021) by M. Night Shyamalan, Life After Life (2022) by John Crowley and, closer to home, the Australian series Totally Completely Fine (2023) by Lucy Gaffy, and Gaysorn Thavat’s New Zealand feature The Justice of Bunny King (2021).

She began filming for Jane Campion’s The Power of The Dog (2021) in January 2020. Affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, filming shut down in March and resumed in June 2020. Jane Campion would go on to win an Oscar and a Silver Lion for Best Director.

Since her breakthrough role, Thomasin has been in constant work, but often returns home to Wellington to spend time with friends and family.  

“It’s not just the glitz and glam you see at the Met Gala, for example, or on the red carpet. But it’s worth it, it’s really worth it. I love acting. It’s very special and I’m very lucky to be doing what I’m doing.”

But home is where the heart is and, in response to the question from Steven Colbert on The Late Show: “What does New Zealand have that we don’t?” Thomasin answered: “My family.”