How Richard started in the film industry

I went to a Māori boys boarding school called Wesley College and I was always tall and skinny. I'm not so skinny anymore but I was always tall and I unfortunately always got the female parts in the role.

One year I was playing a nurse, nurse MacGyver and the next year I was playing a saloon girl. But what it gave me is I started to discover as I was acting on stage that I was far more interested in all this cool stuff around me and I began building the sets and I got really excited about making the costumes and building the props.

And in my final two years at school I spent a lot of my time designing a fictitious version of the Shakespeare's movie MacBeth - oh sorry - play Macbeth, and designed all the costumes, all the sets. I did all the advertising for this fictitious play that I wanted to put on and in the process taught myself the different crafts that were out there.

Getting into the film industry was really by luck. I, er, Tanya, my partner and I, came to Wellington knowing that we wanted to one day own a cool workshop. We didn't know what we'd make in this workshop but we'd just have a cool workshop and make really neat models. But it was the film industry that ultimately offered us the opportunity.

I had been sculpting margarine sculptures for buffets at restaurants, when I was a student at Polytech, to earn some pocket money to help put me through college. And um, it was that margarine that forged the beginning of our careers because I went on and sculpted the whole of a satirical TV show called Public Eye, a little bit before your guys' time, all in margarine.

I went on and sculpted the whole of Heavenly Creatures, all of the characters, all in margarine, not even knowing that you could buy plasticine. And that's sort of how I fortunately discovered, er, my abilities in the film industry.