Ian Mune

Ian Barry Mune OBE (born 1941) is a New Zealand character actor, director, and screenwriter. His screen acting career spans four decades and more than 50 roles. His work as a director includes hit comedy Came a Hot Friday, an adaptation of classic New Zealand play The End of the Golden Weather, and What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?, the sequel to Once Were Warriors.
Mune was born in Auckland, and educated at Wesley College in the same city. In the 1991 New Year Honours he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to the theatre and film industry. He was married to the writer Josie Mune until her death in 2015.

Mune acted on stage while training to be a teacher in Wellington. After time acting in the UK, he returned to his native New Zealand and won a Feltex award in 1975 after starring in one-off television drama Derek. Another award followed for playing Leo Moynihan, the secretary of a trade union in television series Moynihan. In 1987 he appeared in the TVNZ documentary mini-series Erebus: The Aftermath for which he won the award for Best Male in a Dramatic Role.

In 1994 Mune won another New Zealand television award after playing Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon in television mini-series Fallout, which depicted the end of the Muldoon-led National Government.

He has gone on to appear in a range of New Zealand feature films, including A Song of Good, Savage Honeymoon and I'm Not Harry Jenson. He played Winston Churchill in American telemovie Ike: Countdown to D-Day, and Buster Keaton in Lucy: The Lucille Ball Story.

Mune took multiple creative roles on 1976 anthology series Winners and Losers, which saw him collaborating with director Roger Donaldson. The two first collaborated on Derek; Mune directed and wrote some episodes of the new series, and acted in others. Having helped script Donaldson's first feature film, dystopian thriller Sleeping Dogs, Mune also appeared on-screen alongside its star, Sam Neill.

Mune's other writing credits include adapting classic Ian Cross novel The God Boy into a well-regarded telemovie, the movie version of children's fable The Silent One, and co-writing Goodbye Pork Pie, the first New Zealand feature to win large audiences in its home country.

In 1985 he made his feature debut as a director with hit comedy Came a Hot Friday. Based around the escapades of two smalltown conmen in 50s era New Zealand, the film is based on the novel by Ronald Hugh Morrieson.

Mune won further acclaim in 1991 for directing 'coming of age' drama The End of the Golden Weather, an adaptation of parts of Bruce Mason's classic one-man play. Mune spent a number of years developing this passion project and seeking finance, working with Mason on the project before Mason died.

What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? won nine of its 13 New Zealand Film Award nominations in 1999. The film is the sequel to hard-edged drama Once Were Warriors, which became New Zealand's most successful feature film soon after release. It remains Mune's biggest commercial success to date.

Mune's other directorial projects include a feature-length documentary on comedian (and Came a Hot Friday actor) Billy T James, teenage drama The Whole of the Moon, and UVF thriller The Grasscutter. For television, he directed episodes of comedy Letter to Blanchy and anthology series The Ray Bradbury Theater. He was one of a large team of second unit directors on Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lord of the Rings and played a small cameo in the first film.

In 2008 Mune directed depression-era telefeature movie Life's A Riot. Mune also had a cameo role as a judge, after the actor cast in the role did not show up.

Mune: An Autobiography was published in 2010.