Lee Tamahori, director of ‘Once Were Warriors’ and James Bond film ‘Die Another Day’, dies at age 75 Film

Lee Tamahori, the New Zealand director of Once Were Warriors and Die Another Day, has died at the age of 75.

In a statement to Radio New Zealand, Tamahori’s family said he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease and died “peacefully at home.”

They added: His legacy remains with Wano [family]Mokopuna [grandchild]Every filmmaker inspired him, every boundary he broke, and every story he told with his genius eye and sincere heart.

“Lee was a charismatic leader with a fierce creative spirit who championed Māori talent both on and off screen… We have lost a tremendous creative spirit.”

Born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1950, of mixed Maori and British descent, Tamahori worked his way through the Australian and New Zealand film industries in the 1970s and 1980s, starring in a number of Jeff Murphy films (including Goodbye Pork Pie and The Quiet Earth) and serving as first assistant to director Nagisa Oshima on the high-profile international production Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence.

Tamahori made his film directorial debut with Once Were Warriors, a brutal drama about the brutality of life for a Maori family struggling to survive in Auckland. Upon its release in 1994, it became the highest-grossing film in New Zealand and has gone on to make a global impact. As a result, Tamahori was hired to make the period noir film Mulholland Falls, starring Nick Nolte and Chazz Palminteri, to moderate acclaim and box office success.

However, Tamahori is now a reliable factor in Hollywood, having made the survival thriller The Edge, featuring Anthony Hopkins opposite Bart the Bear in a screenplay by David Mamet, and Along Came the Spider, a James Patterson thriller starring Morgan Freeman.

He then took on his most important work, the Bond film Die Another Day, which became famous for its invisible car and Halle Berry’s orange bikini. This will also be Pierce Brosnan’s last appearance as 007, before the reins are handed over to Daniel Craig. As Tamahori himself noted, the advent of the Bourne film series made the Brosnan era seem a bit dated, but the film was a hit with audiences upon its release in 2002, if not necessarily with critics.

After Bond, Tamahori moved on to another successful sequel, XXX: State of the Union starring Ice Cube, after the star of the original film, Vin Diesel, dropped out. Nic Cage then made the next sci-fi thriller and political tale Double Devil, about Saddam Hussein’s son Uday and his body double, both played by Dominic Cooper.

Tamahori then returned to New Zealand to make Mahana, based on Whiti’s novel Ihimera Bulipasha: King of the Gypsies, about a fictional Maori patriarch, in which he cast “Once Were Warriors” lead actor Temuera Morrison in the role. Saying that it was billed as “a Western, specifically a 1950s American Western,” Tamahori was cool about its failure at the box office in his home country. “It’s a historical film about a bygone era and it’s about the older generation, so young people didn’t go to see it.”

Released in 2024, The Transformer stars Guy Pearce as a British missionary who becomes involved with the local Maori.