Cliff Curtis

Cliff Curtis
Curtis in 2018
Born	Clifford Vivian Devon Curtis (1968-07-27) 27 July 1968 (age 52) Rotorua, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand
Nationality	New Zealand
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1991–present
Spouse(s)	​ ​ (m. 2009)​
Children	4

Clifford Vivian Devon Curtis (born 27 July 1968) is a New Zealand actor. His film credits include Once Were Warriors (1994), Three Kings (1999), Blow (2001), Training Day (2001), Whale Rider (2002), Sunshine (2007), 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 ABC's Body of Proof and Missing. From 2015 to 2017, Curtis portrayed Travis Manawa on the AMC horror drama series Fear the Walking Dead.^[1]

Though Curtis is ethnically Māori, his many character roles have included a range of ethnicities, such as Hispanic, Samoan, Indian and Arab. He is the co-owner of the independent New Zealand production company Whenua Films.

Early life

Curtis was born in Rotorua, in the North Island of New Zealand. He is one of eight children, the son of an amateur dancer.^[2] Curtis is of Māori descent; his tribal affiliations are Te Arawa^[3] 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,^[4] which nurtured his abilities as a performer in kapa haka. Curtis later performed as a breakdancer and competitively in rock 'n' roll dance competitions.^[5] He received his secondary education at Edmund Rice College, Rotorua.

Career

New Zealand

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.

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 fucken Bully" referring to Curtis's character spoken by "Jake the Muss", played by Temuera Morrison, became one of New Zealand film's most memorable and quoted lines, as well as being part of the "Kiwiana" trend. He played Kahu in the short-film Kahu & Maia, a contemporary depiction of a Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāti Rongomaiwahine legend. He played a seducer in the melodrama Desperate Remedies. In 2000 Curtis starred as family man Billy Williams in Jubilee,^[6] 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.^[7] 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 relationship comedy Eagle vs Shark their first feature film, 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.^[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

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 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, including Avatar 2 and Avatar 3.^[17]

In 2019, he played Jonah Hobbs, the brother of Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) in Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw; their characters are Samoan.^[18]

Personal life

Curtis guards his personal life closely. He was married in late 2009^[19] in a private ceremony at his home, and has three children. He is Roman Catholic.^[20]

Despite being of Māori descent, Curtis has been cast in a variety of roles that have challenged him to play different ethnicities from Hispanic/Latino, Indian and Middle Eastern descent. Upon being asked about his place as an "all-purpose ethnic" actor, he actually responded quite positively to it stating, "It's been a real advantage, I love being ethnic, I love the colour of my skin. There are limitations in the business, that's a reality, but I've been given such wonderful opportunities."^[21]

New Zealand animated series, Bro Town references a character who’s big brother made a career playing Arab terrorists and Hispanic characters in Hollywood. This is an indirect nod of the head to Cliff Curtis.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1993	The Piano	Mana
1993	Desperate Remedies	Fraser
1994	Kahu & Maia	Kahu
1994	Once Were Warriors	Uncle Bully
1994	Rapa Nui	Short Ears
1996	Chicken	Zeke
1996	Mananui	Mana
1998	Deep Rising	Mamooli
1998	Six Days, Seven Nights	Kip
1999	Virus	Hiko
1999	Three Kings	Amir Abdulah
1999	Bringing Out the Dead	Cy Coates
1999	The Insider	Sheikh Fadlallah (as Clifford Curtis)
2000	Jubilee	Billy Williams
2001	Blow	Pablo Escobar
2001	Training Day	'Smiley'
2001	The Majestic	The Evil But Handsome Prince Khalid
2002	Collateral Damage	Claudio 'El Lobo' Perrini
2002	Whale Rider	Porourangi
2003	Runaway Jury	Frank Herrera
2004	Fracture	Detective Franklin
2004	Spooked	Mort Whitman
2004	Heinous Crime	Pizza Delivery Man
2005	The Pool	Husband
2005	River Queen	Wiremu
2006	The Fountain	Captain Ariel
2007	Sunshine	Searle
2007	Fracture	Detective Flores
2007	Live Free or Die Hard	FBI Deputy Director Miguel Bowman
2008	10,000 BC	Tic'Tic
2009	Push	Hook Waters
2009	Crossing Over	Hamid Baraheri
2010	The Last Airbender	Fire Lord Ozai
2011	Colombiana	Emilio Restrepo
2012	A Thousand Words	Dr. Sinja
2014	The Dark Horse	Genesis Potini
2015	Last Knights	Lieutenant Cortez
2016	Risen	Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth
2018	The Meg	James 'Mac' Mackreides
2019	Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw	Jonah Hobbs
2019	Doctor Sleep	Billy Freeman
2021	Reminiscence		Post-production
2022	Avatar 2	Tonowari	Post-production
2024	Avatar 3	Tonowari	Filming

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1991	Under Cover	Zip	Television film
1994	Hercules in the Underworld	Nessus
1995	Mysterious Island	Peter	2 episodes
1996	City Life	Daniel Freeman	4 episodes
1998	The Chosen	Father Tahere	Television film
2002	Point of Origin	Mike Camello
2004	Traffic	Adam Kadyrov	3 episodes
2009–2010	Trauma	Reuben 'Rabbit' Palchuk	20 episodes
2011	Body of Proof	FBI Agent Derek Ames	2 episodes
2012	Missing	Agent Dax Miller	10 episodes
2014	Gang Related	Javier Acosta	13 episodes
2015–2017	Fear the Walking Dead	Travis Manawa	21 episodes
2016–2017	Talking Dead	Himself	3 episodes

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cliff Curtis.

• Cliff Curtis at IMDb
• Cliff Curtis on NZ On Screen