Alison Bruce is an award-winning actress who has played a diverse range of film and TV characters. She has starred in New Zealand’s long-running soap Shortland Street and some of our biggest TV dramas such as Shark in the Park, Mercy Peak and the kidult comedy Being Eve.

Her film career includes roles in The World’s Fastest Indian, An Angel At My Table, and Reckless Behaviour. She last graced our television screens playing Agnetha in The Almighty Johnsons.

In this ScreenTalk, Bruce talks about:

• Creating chaos for the production company of Shark in the Park
• How appearing in one episode of Xena made her a sex symbol
• Working with a young and ‘geeky’ Ryan Gosling on Young Hercules
• How the lead role in Majik and Rose changed her career
• Fighting over a toilet seat with Steve Lovatt in Being Eve
• Working her real pregnancy into the storylines of Mercy Peak
• Being too nervous to speak on the set of The World’s Fastest Indian
• Feeling anxious about the scripts on The Almighty Johnsons
• Always feeling she’ll be caught out as a ‘fraud’ as an actress

This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a Creative Commons licence.

NZ On Screen: Camera and Editing – Andrew Whiteside