Actor, acting teacher, and artist Grant Tilly has played cow cockies, assassins, missionaries, and German villains in funny hats. And that’s not even counting his long-running stage career, which has included a run of classic Kiwi plays, one of which became acclaimed movie Middle Age Spread.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Tilly talks about:

• How people sometimes still recognise him from 60s TV show Joe’s World, and the topics he was told never to mention on early series In View of the Circumstances.

• Acting in 70s mega production The Governor, and the challenges of competing on screen against his bad haircut.

• Being allowed to go solo by director John Reid while making two farmers and a dead Dad comedy Carry Me Back, for a memorable scene in which his character finally tells his father what he really thinks of him.

• Squaring off against Men in Black star Tommy Lee Jones for a fight scene in movie epic Savage Islands.

• How his career as an actor, stage designer, and co-founder of Wellington’s Circa Theatre has intersected with the works of writer Roger Hall – including his acclaimed performance as a philandering headmaster in Middle Age Spread.

• Playing a repressed accountant who becomes obsessively interested in a masseuse in movie Skin Deep.

• The challenges of portraying real life people on screen

• The similarities between war and movie-making

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

NZ On Screen: Direction and Interview – Ian Pryor.  Camera and Editing – Alex Backhouse