Keisha Castle-Hughes

Actor

• Born: March 24, 1990
• Place of Birth: Donnybrook, Australia

Contribution: Keisha Castle-Hughes is a New Zealand actor best known for her Academy Award–nominated role in The Whale Rider (2002) and her performance as Mary in The Nativity Story (2006).

Background

Keisha Castle-Hughes was born in Donnybrook, Western Australia, on March 24, 1990. Her family moved to New Zealand the following year. Her mother, Desrae Hughes, is of Maori descent, while her father, Tim Castle, is Australian. She is the eldest of five children. Castle-Hughes was raised in Mount Wellington, a suburb of Auckland, where she attended Penrose High School.

Career

Castle-Hughes was one of many children interviewed by producers and casting agents for the role of Paikea in the 2002 film Whale Rider. At twelve years old, Castle-Hughes had never acted professionally, but she impressed the casting agents with her attitude and her ability to interact comfortably with adults. In an interview with the BBC, Castle-Hughes said that there were ten thousand other children considered for the role.

Whale Rider, directed by Niki Caro, was a critical and popular success largely due to the performance of Castle-Hughes, who, at age thirteen, became the youngest actress ever nominated for an Academy Award for best actress in a leading role (a record that was broken in 2013 by nine-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis). In Whale Rider, Castle-Hughes’s character, Paikea “Pai” Apirana, is a young Maori girl who aspires to become the leader of her people, though this role is traditionally reserved for men. Despite discouragement and abuse from her grandfather for breaking the tapu (sacredness) of their lineage, Pai learns the methods of the village chiefs and eventually proves herself to be the new leader.

After shooting the film, Castle-Hughes spent two years dealing with the immediate and overwhelming fame that resulted from her Academy Award nomination. Castle-Hughes has said in interviews that even after the immense success of her first acting role, she was uncertain whether she wanted to pursue acting as a career and expressed interest in becoming a science teacher.

Castle-Hughes was inundated with film offers in the wake of Whale Rider. In 2005 she appeared in the third film of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, playing the queen of Naboo. The role was relatively minor, and all of Castle-Hughes’s scenes were filmed in a single day.

Castle-Hughes returned to New Zealand and to school. She appeared in a controversial Prince video, “Cinnamon Girl,” and, at sixteen, played the role of Mary in The Nativity Story (2006), directed by Catherine Hardwicke. The film received mixed reviews, with some critics noting Castle-Hughes’s performance as one of the highlights of the film.

Next, Castle-Hughes reunited with Whale Rider director Niki Caro to star in a film based on the best-selling novel The Vintner’s Luck (1998), by New Zealand author Elizabeth Knox. The film, later retitled A Heavenly Vintage and released in 2009, received positive reviews at its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, and actor Vera Farmiga won a 2010 Qantas Film and Television Award for best lead actress for her performance. Also in 2009, Castle-Hughes appeared in the television film Piece of My Heart, which addresses the treatment of unwed mothers in New Zealand.

In 2011, Castle-Hughes starred in the unusual Japanese horror film Vampire, playing the role of Jellyfish. The film focuses on a vampire who opts to feed by finding willing victims through social networking on the Internet. The same year, she had a minor role in the Australian film Red Dog, a family film about a dog wandering through Australia searching for his owner and intersecting with the lives of a diverse group of Australians. The film was based on a true story of a cattle dog who became a folk hero in Western Australia, commemorated with a statue erected in the town of Dampier.

Also in 2011, Castle-Hughes began to appear regularly in the television series The Almighty Johnsons, about a group of four New Zealand brothers who are living incarnations of Norse gods. Castle-Hughes starred as Gaia, the main character’s flatmate and eventual love interest. The comedy drama received mixed critical reviews but gained a strong local following.

In the years following Castle-Hughes went on to make guest appearances on a number of American cable television shows, most notably as Obara Sand for HBO's series based on the George R. R. Martin novel series A Game of Thrones. She later took the small-screen roles of Donna Mancini in the short-lived dramedy series Roadies (2016), FBI agent Tabby in the crime drama Manhunt: Unabomber (2017), and boxer Jessica Connor in the Australian miniseries On the Ropes (2018). Beginning in 2019 Castle-Hughes joined the regular cast of CBS's FBI: Most Wanted, playing FBI analyst Hana Gibson, a role she still played as of 2024.

During this period, Castle-Hughes landed some film roles as well. She starred in the New Zealand thriller Queen of Carthage and the Australian/New Zealand comedy Find Your Voice, both released in 2014. She later played Alea Aieti in the popular, acclaimed Iraq War drama Thank You for Your Service (2017) and appeared in an American comedic horror film, Tone-Deaf (2019), which was critically panned. Castle-Hughes was the voice of Doctor Emerie Karr in 2023's Star Wars: The Bad Batch.

Impact

Castle-Hughes’s breakout performance in Whale Rider garnered her an Oscar nomination, making her the youngest actor at the time to be nominated for an Academy Award for best actress in a lead role, and made her an overnight celebrity. Since then, she has appeared in several other supporting and starring roles and has continued to receive praise for her work.

Personal Life

Castle-Hughes became pregnant at age sixteen by then boyfriend Bradley Hull, resulting in the birth of her daughter, Felicity-Amore Hull. The pregnancy caused a major media stir throughout New Zealand, and Castle-Hughes said that she was forced to wear a disguise to avoid photographers when she went to the hospital to deliver her baby.

In a 2009 article in People magazine, Castle-Hughes said that she enjoyed being a mother and felt she did not miss out on anything by having her child young, despite media criticism of her decision. In a 2013 article in New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, Castle-Hughes said that her early fame threw her life into disarray, causing her to start drinking and driving a wedge between her and her parents. After splitting from longtime fiancé Hull, Castle-Hughes married New Zealand DJ Jonathan Morrison in 2013. The couple later divorced. She married Donny Grahamer in early 2021, and the couple had a daughter together in June of that year.

Bibliography

Brooks, Dan. "Keisha Castle-Hughes on Doctor Emerie Karr and The Bad Batch Season 2’s Cliffhanger." Star Wars, 30 Mar. 2023, www.starwars.com/news/keisha-castle-hughes-bad-batch-interview. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

Castle-Hughes, Keisha. “Interview with Keisha Castle-Hughes.” Interview by Russell Baillie. New Zealand Herald. APN Holdings NZ, 28 Feb. 2004. Web. 24 July 2013.

Castle-Hughes, Keisha. Interview by Anwar Brett. BBC. BBC, 8 July 2003. Web. 24 July 2013.

Chi, Paul. “Keisha Castle-Hughes Finds Young Motherhood a Blessing.” People.com. Time, 16 Sept. 2009. Web. 24 July 2013.

Milford, Catherine. “Keisha Castle-Hughes: ‘Fame Tore My Family Apart.’” New Zealand Woman’s Weekly. APN Holdings NZ, 17 Sept. 2012. Web. 24 July 2013.

Rosen, Lisa. “Whale Rider’s Keisha Castle-Hughes Is Ready to Grab Hollywood by the Tail.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 27 Feb. 2009. Web. 24 July 2013.