Clifford Vivian Devon Curtis (born 27 July 1968) is a New Zealand actor. He has shown the ability to portray characters of a wide range of ethnicities — particularly Latin Americans and Arabs — by virtue of his Māori descent. He has appeared as a character actor in many Hollywood films, while back home in New Zealand he is usually the main star.
He acted in the New Zealand film Once Were Warriors as Uncle Bully, a child rapist. He has starred opposite many big names in Hollywood such as Hugh Jackman, Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford, Johnny Depp, Nicholas Cage, Denzel Washington, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Carrey and George Clooney in films such as Three Kings , Blow , The Fountain and Training Day. His international reputation grew further in 2003, when he was one of the leads in the internationally popular New Zealand film Whale Rider. During production of River Queen he crashed his car into a house while answering a cellphone text message - escaping with only minor injuries.
In 2004 with producer Ainsley Gardiner, he formed independent film production company Whenua Films. The goals of the company are to support the growth of the New Zealand indigenous filmmaking scene, and to be supportive of local short filmmakers. He and Ainsley were appointed to manage the development and production of the Short Films Fund for 2005/2006 by The New Zealand Film Commission. They have already produced several shorts under the new company banner, notably, "Two Cars, One Night," which received an Academy Award nomination in 2005. Whenua also produced another successful short film by director Mike Jonathan called "Hawaikii" in 2006. Both short films have circulated through many of the prestigious international film festivals like Berlinale. At the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, Miramax Films bought US distribution rights to their first feature film Eagle vs Shark.
Clifton Garfield Curtis (born July 3, 1881 in Delaware, Ohio, died April 23, 1943 in Utica, Ohio) was a pitcher in Major League Baseball. He pitched from 1909-1913.
Cliff Curtis was born in Rotorua, Aotearoa, New Zealand, on July 27, 1968. Of New Zealand Maori descent (Ngati Hauiti, Te Arawa) he spent time when young learning the traditional Maori fighting styles of mau rakau. He enrolled at the New Zealand Drama School, and then the Teatro Dmitri Scoula in Switzerland. After returning to Aotearoa New Zealand from Europe, he was cast in Piano, The (1993). Subsequent roles in New Zealand include the camp melodrama Desperate Remedies (1993), the gruelling urban drama Once Were Warriors (1994), in which he plays a child rapist, and the lighthearted comedy Jubilee (2000). In Hollywood, Cliff Curtis has played a range of different roles and ethnicities in films. He plays a Colombian in Blow (2001), an Arab in Three Kings (1999) and Insider, The (1999), a Latino in Training Day (2001) and Runaway Jury (2003), and a drug dealer of ambiguous ethnicity in Bringing Out the Dead (1999). However, he is probably best known for his role as Paikea's father Porourangi, in Whale Rider (2002).
