Temuera Morrison

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Date of Birth : Dec 26th 1960

He has become one of New Zealand’s most famous stars for his roles as the abusive Jake “the Muss” Heke in 1994’s Once Were Warriors and as bounty hunter Jango Fett in the Star Wars series.

Morrison was born in the town of Rotorua in the North Island of New Zealand, to Hana Stafford and Laurie Morrison, a musician. He is a M?ori and the nephew of M?ori entertainer Sir Howard Morrison. His secondary education took place at Wesley College, Auckland where he was Head Prefect in 1977. Morrison lives in New Zealand, and divides his time filming there and in Australia and the United States.

Trained in drama under the New Zealand Special Performing Arts Training Scheme, one of Morrison’s earliest roles was in the 1988 film Never Say Die, opposite Lisa Eilbacher. Before this he had starred as a character called “Ricky” in the original TV1 soap opera called “Close To Home”. He played Dr. Hone Ropata on the television soap opera Shortland Street from 1992 – 1995; he was immortalized when another character rebuked him with the line “You’re not in Guatemala now, Dr. Ropata!”

In 1994 he received attention as the violent and abusive M?ori husband Jake Heke in Once Were Warriors, a film adaptation of Alan Duff’s novel of the same name. The role won him international acclaim, and he received the 1994 award for best male performance in a dramatic role from the New Zealand Film and TV Awards. He reprised the role in the sequel, What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?, for which he received the Best Actor award from the New Zealand Film Awards. He has appeared in supporting roles in Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997) and The Beautiful Country (2004). In 2005, Morrison became the host of the talk show The Tem Show on New Zealand television.

In recent years, Morrison has received much popularity from his role as the bounty hunter Jango Fett in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002). Part of the film’s plot involves an army of clones created with Jango’s DNA; Morrison also provided acting and voice work for the soldiers. He reappeared as a number of clones in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, the final film of the series, and rerecorded the lines of the character Boba Fett (Jango’s son and another clone) in the 2004 DVD re-releases of the original Star Wars trilogy, replacing the voice of Jason Wingreen.