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Lee Tamahori
Lee Tamahori
Born	Warren Lee Tamahori; 17 June 1950 (age 74); Wellington, New Zealand
Education	Tawa College
Occupation	Director
Years active	1983–present

Warren Lee Tamahori (/ˌtɑːməˈhɔːri/; born 17 June 1950) is a New Zealand film director. His feature directorial debut, Once Were Warriors (1994), was a widespread critical and commercial success, and is considered one of the greatest New Zealand films ever made.^[1]^[2] Subsequently, he has directed a variety of works both in his native country and in Hollywood, including the survival drama The Edge (1997), the Alex Cross thriller Along Came a Spider (2001), the James Bond film Die Another Day (2002), the political biopic The Devil's Double (2011), and the period drama Mahana (2016).

Tamahori won the New Zealand Film Award for Best Director for Once Were Warriors, with a second nomination for Mahana.

Early life

Tamahori was born in Wellington, New Zealand. He is of Māori ancestry on his father's side and British on his mother's. He grew up in Tawa, a northern suburb of Wellington. Educated at Tawa School and Tawa College,^[3] he began his career as a commercial artist and photographer.

Career

Early work

Tamahori moved into the film industry the late 1970s, getting the door working for nothing, then working as a boom operator for Television New Zealand, and on the feature films Skin Deep, Goodbye Pork Pie, Bad Blood, and Race for the Yankee Zephyr.

In the early 1980s Pork Pie director Geoff Murphy promoted Tamahori to become an assistant director on Utu, and he subsequently worked as first assistant director on The Silent One, Murphy's The Quiet Earth, Came a Hot Friday and Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. In 1986 Tamahori co-founded production company Flying Fish, which specialised in making commercials. Tamahori made his name with a series of high-profile television commercials, including one awarded 'Commercial of the Decade'.^[4]

Feature films

Tamahori had directed a number of shorter dramas for television before he made his feature film debut in 1994 with Once Were Warriors, a gritty depiction of a violent Māori family. The film had problems finding funding, but it went on to break box office records in New Zealand. Overseas it sold to many countries and won rave reviews from Time magazine, Village Voice, and The Melbourne Age, with Time, The Age and Première naming it one of the ten best films of the year.

Tamahori moved to Hollywood and directed the period crime drama Mulholland Falls (1996), although this was not received well critically or commercially. This was followed by the successful wilderness film The Edge (1997), which starred Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin and Die Another Day (2002), the twentieth and most successful James Bond film made up until that point. He also directed an episode of The Sopranos and the thriller Along Came a Spider (2001).

Tamahori's next film was the sequel to XXX (2002), titled XXX: State of the Union (2005), starring Ice Cube and Willem Dafoe; he replaced the original film's director, Rob Cohen. In 2007 he directed Next, a science fiction action film based on The Golden Man, a short story by Philip K. Dick. The film starred Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore and Jessica Biel. The drama The Devil's Double starring Dominic Cooper was released in 2011, a dramatisation of Latif Yahia's claims that he was forced to become body double to Uday Hussein, son of Saddam.^[5]^[6]

In 2012 Tamahori was attached to the action epic Emperor, about a young woman seeking revenge for the execution of her father by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.^[7] Adrien Brody was cast in 2014 as the Emperor^[8] opposite Sophie Cookson as the young woman, also cast in 2014.^[9] The film is unfinished and its release has been held up^[update] by legal challenges.^[10]

In 2015, Tamahori directed Mahana (a.k.a. The Patriarch), his first feature made in New Zealand since Once Were Warriors. The rural-set drama was based on the novel Bulibasha by Witi Ihimaera, and starred Temuera Morrison, whom he had earlier directed in Once Were Warriors. The movie was released in New Zealand in March 2016, after debuting at the Berlin Film Festival.^[11]

In 2022, Tamahori directed the historical drama The Convert, starring Guy Pearce and Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne.

Personal life

Tamahori has been married twice and has two sons, one from each marriage.^[4]

Legal issues

In January 2006, Tamahori was arrested on Santa Monica Boulevard when, according to Los Angeles police, he entered an undercover policeman's car while wearing a woman's dress and offered to perform a sex act in exchange for money.^[12] In February 2006, he pleaded no contest in a Los Angeles court to a charge of criminal trespass in return for prosecutors dropping charges of prostitution and loitering. He was placed on 36 months' probation and ordered to perform 15 days of community service.^[13]^[14]