Despite no previous acting experience, Keisha was chosen from thousands of girls in an extensive school-wide search. She had always dreamt of becoming an actor. WHALE RIDER is Keisha's first role.
Eleven years old at the time of filming, Keisha had assistance from director Niki Caro and tutor/chaperone Stephanie Wilkin. "Stef and Niki showed me how to find my feelings and how to talk properly. Then after a couple of weeks I just fell into the character. I didn't need to look back on anything because I could feel the character so much."
She describes Pai as "very brave. Her life has been pretty sad for the past 11 years because although she's the first-born she's a girl and the tradition required a boy. This makes Koro, her grandfather, sad, but she loves him no matter how much he dislikes her, she loves him. And she'll do anything to make him happy."
"Keisha has an amazing ability to focus," says director Niki Caro. "Her depth was immediately apparent. I rehearse as much as I can with actors and very intensively in pre-production. Keisha did some amazing work in that rehearsal period and has built and built on that. She's amazing."
"Keisha's performance never fails to move," agrees Producer Tim Sanders. "She plays the role with an emotional sincerity that is extremely rare in one so young. She has a natural talent and an absolute ability to wring emotion from her scenes and a true commitment to the role. "
"I think Keisha is a star, she's got a great future," adds Producer John Barnett. "For somebody who's never acted before, the maturity and the emotion that she brings to this is remarkable - you really feel she's inside the skin of Pai."
"I've always wanted to be an actor," Keisha admits. "But I think recently I changed my decision. I thought 'I can't be an actor, I can't'. Then this film came up and it was like someone saying to me, 'You can, don't give up'. "
NEW ZEALAND