Peter Jackson biography

Synopsis

Profile

Film director. Peter Jackson was born on October 31, 1961 in Pukerua Bay, New Zealand, a picturesque coastal town near the capital of Wellington. "Our house was on the edge of a cliff that sort of plummeted right down into the ocean," Jackson recalled. "It was a children's playground, an adventure playground." His parents were both English immigrants. His father, Bill, was a local authority employee, and his mother, Joan, was a homemaker. Jackson's family bought their first TV when he was five years old, and the world of television immediately captured his young imagination, especially a futuristic English sci-fi show called Thunderbirds. Jackson's obsession with film began when he saw the original King Kong movie at the age of nine. "I think I still have a rotting puppet of King Kong somewhere in my basement," he said. "It was about a foot high. Then I made a cardboard cut-out of the Empire State Building for him to stand on, and I painted a backdrop of Manhattan."

In 1971, the same year that he saw King Kong, Jackson's parents received a Super 8 movie camera as a gift. Jackson remembers thinking, "Now I can get my spaceships that I've made, my models, and I can film them, just like Thunderbirds." Using his friends as actors, his parents' house as a set and whatever he could concoct in the kitchen for special effects, Jackson set out to make original movies. He recalled, "I did like a World War II drama film with friends of mine in old army uniforms — kids with big helmets and uniforms that don't fit very well — running around, dug trenches in my parents' garden." He attended Kapiti College, a state-run secondary school, but dropped out at the age of 16 so that he could get a job to finance his film hobby. "I just wanted to get out of school and into a job, any job, so that I could start saving up for the next piece of film equipment that I wanted," he said.

Jackson landed a job as a photographic lithographer at a local newspaper. He worked six days a week while living at home in order to save as much money as possible to purchase a state of the art camera. Once he had purchased equipment, Jackson set out to create a film. Filming only on Sundays, his one day off, over the next several years Jackson wrote and directed a full-length comedy film about flesh-eating aliens. To Jackson's great surprise, he received a $30,000 grant from the New Zealand Film Commission that enabled him to quit his job and finish the film and then a $200,000 grant to pay for post-production. The finished picture, called Bad Taste, debuted at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival, where it became a surprise hit and landed distribution deals in 12 countries.