Temuera Morrison's movie career has taken him back and forth from New Zealand to Hollywood for two decades.
It all began when director Lee Tamahori picked him to play Jake the Muss in Once Were Warriors. Now they're back together again for the first time since in Mahana.
Mahana is set on the east coast in the '60s, in a small, bustling farming town where two prominent Maori families dominate the shearing community.
There is no love lost between the Mahanas and the Poatas, but there will be many sheep shorn and much wool, tears and blood on the shearing shed floor before the reason for that rivalry is revealed.
Tamihana Mahana rules with an unforgiving iron fist, and for the actor who played him the experience was a special one, as it reunited him with Tamihori.
"I knew people would ask me, 'What's it like being back working with Lee again?'" says Morrison. "It felt like nothing changed, even though all that time we'd been apart, 20 years. We were back into it.
"For me it's my best work to date. It's like, for me, being another one of the kai hoi in the waka. The waka is called Mahana and we all had to paddle hard and head towards this goal we have tonight."
Mahana opens here next week, but premiered in Berlin a few weeks ago, and whenever Morrison hits any red carpet, there's one thing he can be sure of -- there will be Star Wars fans.
"I even had my Star Wars fans at the Berlin Film Festival for this, waiting for me, calling out 'Mr Morrison, Mr Morrison'. I'm like, what? I'm sure they're calling out to me. That's probably because they can't pronounce my first name. They're going, 'Tem, um, Tem...Mr Morrison! Mr Morrison!'"
But the audience Morrison most wants to impress is right here at home.
"There's a saying on the east coast, it's in Maori -- ka mo ta wehe. That's what I have to say about this film. That means, those little things on the back of your neck there, they start standing. Ka mau te wehi."
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