Taika Waititi

Taika David Cohen, known professionally as Taika Waititi, is a New Zealand filmmaker, writer, actor, and comedian born on 16 August 1975. He has received an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Grammy Award, alongside nominations for Golden Globe and Emmy Awards. In 2022, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. His New Zealand feature films, including Boy and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, have each been the top-grossing films entirely funded and produced within New Zealand.

Waititi was born in Wellington to a Māori father of French Canadian and Te Whānau-ā-Apanui descent and a mother of European descent. Raised in Wellington's Aro Valley and Raukokore, he identifies as Māori and Jewish. He attended Onslow College and later studied theatre at Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1997. Early in his career, he used his mother's surname, Cohen, for film and writing projects and his father's surname, Waititi, for visual arts before adopting Waititi professionally.

While in university, Waititi performed with the comedy ensemble So You're a Man and later formed The Humourbeasts with Jemaine Clement, receiving the Billy T Award in 1999. That year, he acted in the feature Scarfies under the name Cohen. He directed several short films, including Two Cars, One Night (2003), which earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Live Action Short Film. He made his feature directorial debut with the 2007 romantic comedy Eagle vs Shark, followed by the 2010 feature Boy, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

In 2014, Waititi co-wrote, co-directed, and starred in the vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows alongside Clement, which was later adapted into a 2019 television series. He wrote and directed Hunt for the Wilderpeople in 2016. Waititi subsequently transitioned to major studio filmmaking by directing Marvel Studios's Thor: Ragnarok (2017), in which he also portrayed the character Korg using motion capture.

He wrote, directed, and starred as an imaginary version of Adolf Hitler in the 2019 black comedy Jojo Rabbit. The film earned six Academy Award nominations, and Waititi won Best Adapted Screenplay, becoming the first person of Māori descent to win in a screenplay category. He also won a Grammy Award as a producer of its soundtrack. In television, he directed an episode and voiced the character IG-11 in the Star Wars series The Mandalorian, earning a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.

Waititi's subsequent television work includes co-creating Reservation Dogs and directing, executive producing, and starring in Our Flag Means Death. He directed Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) and the sports feature Next Goal Wins (2023). In 2024, he co-wrote and directed the pilot for a Time Bandits television adaptation and directed the pilot for Interior Chinatown. Waititi actively supports indigenous filmmakers through executive producer roles on independent features and by incorporating cultural initiatives during productions.