GIBNEY, REBECCA (1964– ). One of Australia and New Zealand’s most recognized actors, Rebecca Gibney was born in New Zealand in 1964. Her film career began in 1983 in New Zealand with the film produced and written by John O’Shea, Among the Cinders in which she played Sally. The film tells a *coming-of-age story of a young teenage runaway and his grandfather. She followed this with a part in Gaylene Preston’s Mr. Wrong (1985). She then moved to Australia to play the bleeding-heart, middle-class social worker Jill Harkness involved in a system where the state believes it can do a better job than parents at caring for children, in Paul Maloney’s *social realist film, I Live with Me Dad (1985). After playing in many television series, she then starred in the thriller Jigsaw (1990), trying to unravel her husband’s secret life. In the romantic *comedy Lucky Break (1995), she played Gloria Wrightman, the jealous fiancé of Eddie (*Anthony LaPaglia), who is becoming attracted to the disabled writer, Sofie (Gia Carides). Gibney played Penny Macgregor in the family adventure Joey (1997). Since then, she has appeared in many television series and television films, and has been nominated for awards in these roles.
GOODBYE PORK PIE (1980). Geoff Murphy and Ian Mune wrote the screenplay for this film, which Murphy subsequently directed. The film is significant for two reasons. It was the first to recover its costs from the domestic market. It proved to skeptics, especially those in the distribution and exhibition chains, that New Zealanders were appreciative of narratives about themselves, rather than those about people in other countries that had populated the silver screen for 30 years. Second, it was the first New Zealand feature screened at Cannes.
The film resembles in some ways the *ocker comedy films of the same period in Australian filmmaking, in that it is about young men who lead unproductive lives with anarchic abandon, causing good-natured mayhem for those in their wake. Violence is not a feature of their activities as they traverse New Zealand in a yellow Mini Minor, so they maintain the empathy of the audience. Indeed, one audience gave the film a standing ovation.