Katrina Hobbs

After trying on acting and dance at school, Katrina Hobbs scored two big screen roles: playing teen hero in 1990 alien encounter series The Boy from Andromeda, and young wife to deserting WWII soldier Craig McLachlan in Absent Without Leave. Since then her Trans-Tasman career has included presenting roles in Australia, Aotearoa and Russia, a stint on Celebrity Treasure Island, and two years as Doctor Kelly Watson on Home and Away. In 2022 Hobbs returned to Kiwi screens as meddling mum Liz Griffiths, on popular soap Shortland Street; she'd previously played a cop who romances Blair Strang's character back in 1999.

My mum was an actress when I was little. We were brought up on film sets so that’s what I knew and understood and what I gravitated towards. I suppose all of us had had that in our DNA, if you like, from a very young age. Katrina Hobbs on the influence of her mother Aileen O'Sullivan, in a Stuff interview, 19 January 2022