Taika Waititi, Thor: Love and Thunder director also known for Jojo Rabbit and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, is a Hollywood powerhouse

He’s played a pirate and a caricatured Adolf Hitler, voiced a droid in The Mandalorian, delivered some quirky and wildly inventive films and won a writing Oscar

Five years after directing flamboyant space Viking caper Thor: Ragnarok, the multi-talented New Zealander is back with another star-studded Thor instalment

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Taika Waititi attends the Los Angeles premiere of Thor: Love And Thunder. The multi-talented New Zealander is riding high, with a Star Wars project in the offing. Photo: AFP

Published: 4:15am, 6 Jul 2022Updated: 9:46am, 7 Jul 2022

New Zealand-born filmmaker Taika Waititi has become a creative powerhouse in Hollywood, accruing credits as an actor, writer, producer and director in a string of projects for both film and television.

Still best known perhaps for his controversial 2019 hit Jojo Rabbit, for which he won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay, Waititi, who is half Maori and half Jewish, describes himself as a “Polynesian Jew”, and was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2022.

While at university in Wellington, he was part of a comedy troupe with Jermaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, who went on to star in TV series Flight of the Conchords. In 2005, his short film Two Cars, One Night was nominated for an Academy Award.

Waititi’s 2010 film Boy set a box office record for the most successful domestic film in New Zealand which stood for six years until it was broken by his 2016 film Hunt for the Wilderpeople, starring Sam Neill.

Natalie Portman (left) as Mighty Thor and Chris Hemsworth as Thor in a still from Thor: Love and Thunder. Photo: Jasin Boland/Marvel Studios

For the small screen, Waititi has written and directed episodes of Flight of the Conchords, Reservation Dogs, and The Mandalorian, in which he also voices droid IG-11, as well as the HBO series Our Flag Means Death, in which he appears as the notorious pirate Blackbeard.

Waititi regularly casts himself in his films, and has also appeared on the big screen in The Suicide Squad and Free Guy, both from 2021, while lending his distinctive voice to the character of Mo in this summer’s Pixar adventure Lightyear.