Formative Performances: Keisha Castle-Hughes in “Whale Rider”

[The following is a guest post from abovethetitle.]

In 2002, a great miracle happened. New Zealand’s Niki Caro searched far and wide for an actress to play the lead in her adaptation of “Whale Rider,” the story of a young girl struggling to become the leader of her patrilineal tribe. After auditioning 10,000 children, she discovered Keisha Castle-Hughes, who had never acted in anything and who famously lied by saying she could swim well enough to survive the film’s underwater scenes. Despite being foreign, low budget and completely unknown, Castle-Hughes’s performance rightfully gained some very VIP fans, with Julia Roberts openly campaigning for the 12-year-old to be recognized by Oscar. In one of the biggest nomination morning shocks in recent memory, Castle-Hughes scored big, becoming the youngest ever nominee for Best Actress, despite being campaigned and SAG nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Unlike a lot of performances bound to make this list, this is one you may not have seen. The scene I chose is the pinnacle of her performance and one of two scenes in this underrated gem that moved me to tears.

I have several great memories associated with seeing this for the first time, both due to the caliber of her performance as well as the message board frenzy about her at the time. We all seemed to adopt this meme as our own and were pleasantly elated when Oscar seemed to think out of the box and get something right. As an aside, this film is also one of the great modern odes to girl power, with a pre-teen struggling against the traditions of her ancestry to prove that she is indeed a worthy successor to her lineage. It’s no wonder this is one of my formative performance choices.