Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson is one in the small group of filmmakers who can reliably deliver a large picture that gets all the little things right. He has a unique talent for tailoring technical work to meet the needs of an audience, and has devised several clever innovations in the process of making his biggest blockbusters. While his first forays into the art world came in the form of a childhood interest in photography, it was when a friend of his parents gave him an 8mm film movie camera that he was off to the races.

A “Kiwi”, Peter Jackson, born on Halloween in 1961, continues to work and reside in New Zealand with his wife and creative partner Fran Walsh, who has collaborated with him on his biggest projects. His most successful work has been in creating wowing adaptations of strong source material. The original King Kong was a source of continual fascination to the young Peter Jackson, and in his adult life he managed to realize his longtime dream of creating an updated version that would do the original justice, finding the 1970’s adaptation to be a disappointment.

Peter Jackson’s Gollum character from his Oscarâ-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy represented a breakthrough in the use of digital technology in film. In a pioneering process, Andy Serkis (a frequently appearing actor in Jackson’s films) was used to create the voice, movements, and facial expressions for Gollum, while digitally created visual textures completed the illusion. Such creativity is a characteristic of Peter Jackson’s filmmaking.

Peter Jackson has two children with Fran Walsh, and is broadening the range of the films he chooses to produce and direct—the family drama Lovely Bones being one example. Such a move may surprise Jackson fans, but close watchers of this Hobbit-like filmmaker (a description granted by his wife), will recognize that close character work has been essential for pairing emotion with special effects in his past blockbusters.