Ian Mune has been a fixture in our drama scene for so long - on stage, big and small screen and radio - that we almost tend to take him for granted.
He dominated New Zealand TV when it finally shook off its shackles back in the early 70s, and became one of our first star actors. Then five years later he did the same thing with our film industry - as an actor, a writer and a director.
Ian Mune, front centre, with the cast of The Pact Photo: KOHA PRODUCTIONS
And now he's done it again. He and Irene Wood are heartbreakingly good in a TV series called The Pact, currently on TVNZ On Demand.
Mune spoke to Lynn Freeman on Standing Room Only about his early acting years, his most recent television performance, and what else he's doing with his spare time.
Looking back at his early acting years, Mune spoke fondly of the mid 1960s when he performed in Awatea, a radio play written by Bruce Mason and featuring Opera star Inia te Wiata.
Listen to Mune and other actors perform in Awatea
He was one of the inaugural actors at Downstage Theatre, where he was getting paid 8 pounds a week, while his rent cost 7 pounds. They picked up work from Radio Drama to survive.
Ian Mune Photo: RBA Management
Mune said back in those days you had to enact five different accents in auditions - three British, one American and one Australian. But things changed in the late 1960s, and by the time Mune returned from living overseas for two years, the focus had changed to New Zealand accents.
"I came back from Wales with a beautiful Welsh accent, quite mild, but definitely coloured, and I had to get rid of it, very determinedly, and re-find my Kiwi accent in order to get work," he said.
"It wasn't until we got into telly and into movies where actors really had to master just talk, hahaha, don't project, don't shake your words, don't emphasise things. Just talk the way you do normally."
At one stage, Downstage wasn't able to offer Mune any acting work, and he was asked in he wanted to direct a play instead - and that's how his directing career began. Years of films, plays, and awards followed. He wrote plays, acted and directed, and hasn't stopped.
Now almost 80, Mune is back on the screens as family patriarch Frank, alongside Irene Wood in The Pact.
Written in response to the referendum on the End of Life Choice Act 2019, The Pact explores conversations about voluntary euthanasia.
Mune said the show took him to "places I don't like going to".
"The thing that struck me about the script most, when I first read it, well a number of things; one, the courage of the writers and producers on taking on such a difficult subject; two, the heart of the play, it had a good heart; and three, it involved a lot of humour and the humour leavened the loaf and made it swallowable. It was a really tough play to be working on."
When asked how he prepared for the role and if he knew Wood, Mune laughed and said it was just a matter of saying: "G'day Irene, how are you?"
The two first met in 1961 when Wood made a costume for Mune for a show, and then they were both part of the inaugural Downstage cast, acting in plays together.
Mune said the response to The Pact has been overwhelmingly positive.
"People have very much taken the show the way I think the producers intended it to be taken, as a story and characters to become involved with, to be taken to heart and then to think about. It leaves you with a lot to think about - and it certainly doesn't come up with quick and easy answers."
He walked away from writing and directing years ago as he says, at his age, "there's just too much BS involved to get a movie off the ground".
But he keeps himself busy, appearing in one or two stage plays a year, and has returned to an old love and is painting all the time.
"And I'm loving it. Loving it."
