HULK OUT LIKE HERCULES: ABOUT GRAE BURTON
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Grae Burton is a successful New Zealand actor, director, writer and film maker. He’s also slightly late for our meeting. He apologises - he was (just casually) filming an interview with Sir Ian McKellen.
It’s for a documentary project Grae’s working on where he talks to famous actors for Actors Equity New Zealand. While some of us may have been going gaga from being in the presence of a wizard, Grae seems relaxed and almost nonchalant. He is extremely humble when it comes to talking about his career.
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Grae can be remembered from his appearances in front of the camera and on stage. He’s been on Shorty Street as a somewhat drunk and creepy Dr. Alan Woodstock, and also in Underbelly – the Martin Johnstone story - this role being Grae’s “screen career highlight thus far”.
Back in the day he also scored parts on Hercules and Young Hercules (playing the brother of the incredibly good-looking Ryan Gosling).
Grae does ads too: he plays the hero in the newest Tui advertisement. The ad shows Grae running through streets, ignoring the doe-eyed pleas of beautiful women who need his help (cat stuck up tree, women lost in truck, and a car that is just too wet and soapy), in order to deliver boxes of Tui to his parched friends.
Bros before hoes.
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But Grae can’t say what he like best, theatre or screen; they’re both “too large to choose a favourite”. He loves the “immediacy and fast turnover” of working on screen and finds that the “real gems of performance can come out of that hot-house environment”.
Yet he also loves the theatre and likes to “experiment on stage in the rehearsal process”. A testament to this experimentation may be his work with The Ugly Shakespeare Company: Grae’s acting CV notes that his key roles include Othello and Lady Macbeth.
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And right now? Grae’s been booking various seasons and one-off shows for his one-man show, Coffee with Eleco, which is about Eleco Boswijk, patron of The World of Wearable Arts and the godfather of coffee culture in New Zealand.
His science fiction play, Free Load, is also set to have its Auckland debut at The Basement Theatre Studio from the 14th – 18th August. Grae admits that, underneath it all, he is a big geek. Not only does he have a self-confessed science-fiction addiction, he has also has an extensive Incredible Hulk comic book collection. Grae Smash!
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