An isolated Marlborough lighthouse has played a crucial role in helping one of Hollywood's hottest couples hook up.
While filming romantic drama The Light Between Oceans, which was shot in New Zealand, Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander soon hit it off.
The pair went all-out on the romance - they fell for each other on-screen, they fell for each other off-screen, and they both fell for New Zealand.
Some of The Light Between Oceans' key scenes were shot in Port Chalmers just outside Dunedin, but the bulk of the film is set at an isolated lighthouse at Cape Campbell in Marlborough, where the cast and crew lived for five-and-a-half weeks.
The duo weren't too keen on the prospect of living at an isolated light house in New Zealand, but Fassbender revealed that eventually, "you couldn't get us off the peninsula".
And there's no prizes for guessing why that is.
"We didn't try and dampen the chemistry for the screen - let's put it that way," Fassbender said, diplomatically.
On-screen, the couple's life together is irrevocably changed when a third life comes to their secluded island - and director Derek Cianfrance said reading through the screenplay for the first time was a deeply moving experience.
"When I read this story, I was so emotionally drawn to it I was crying in public reading the book, and I was so embarrassed," he said.
And it seems he managed to translate at least some of that emotion to film.
"When the lights came up in Venice I was like, 'okay, okay keep it together, keep it together," Fassbender said.
Before you judge him for crying, though, be warned - The Light Between Oceans is a two-hour tear-jerker from start to finish.
Newshub.
