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No Screen Gems, But Plenty Of Talent
Los Angeles Times
September 13, 2002

Underrated and unknown actors – including some first-timers – bring fresh energy to screenings…

There’s an extraordinary array of breakout performances by young, unknown actresses too. And the movies they are featured in don’t traffic in the usual coming-of-age/sexual awakening clichés. Among them is director Niki Caro’s New Zealand-set Whale Rider, which sneaked up on audiences here as other, bigger films hogged the spotlight. At both public screenings it played to a standing ovation, prompting New Zealand actor Sam Neill, who was in the second audience, to give a speech of thanks to the filmmakers, which reduced Caro and much of the audience to tears. More tears flowed as the centre of the film, 12-year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes, haltingly described what the experience meant to her. She gives what might be described as a quietly heroic performance as a Maori girl who assumes a mythic mantle of leadership over the objections of her traditionally-minded grandfather.

Castle-Hughes, who had never acted before, was found by casting director Diana Rowan in an Auckland classroom. “I was being really naughty, passing notes and talking,” she says, adding that Rowan took her aside when class was dismissed. “She asked me if I was Maori. Then she asked me if I could swim and open my eyes underwater.”