Lee Tamahori
(Director)

Lee Tamahori joined the New Zealand film industry in the late '70s as a boom operator and became an assistant director a decade later. Tamahori made international award-winning commercials and also directed several television series. During a 10-year period, Tamahori directed more than 100 commercials, including spots for Mobius in the U.S. and was particularly acclaimed for his storytelling style. The chance to direct Once Were Warriors (1994) came as a result of his renown in television commercials, and that film's critical acclaim soon attracted Hollywood. His first studio picture, Muholland Falls (1996) was a stylishly crafted noir thriller. Tamahori's next film was the crackerjack survival thriller The Edge (1997) and featured winning performances from Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin and even Hollywood's premiere ursine actor, Bart the Bear. Tamahori followed with Along Came a Spider. Regarding her experience of working with the director, "Spider" co-star Monica Potter commented, "The thing about Lee is he understands the piece so much, from beginning to end; he's got all the pieces figured out. If you ask him something he'll go back 80 scenes and tell you why you're thinking about this at a particular time. He's an amazing director."

More recently Tamahori took on an even more iconic hero from fiction and film: Bond, James Bond. In 2002 the director helmed Die Another Day, the 20th installment of the 007 franchise. Tamahori used the opportunity to cleverly pay tribute to the film's precursors in several visual homages and generally updated the franchise for the 21st century. Tamahori¿s upcoming projects include The Guide and The Stanford Prison Experiment (both 2004).