Miriama Smith

Miriama Smith spent much of her childhood learning dance. Encouraged to model, she found her calling after someone suggested she try acting instead. A couple of advertisements aside, her first dramatic role was as a teenager who leads a friend astray in a 1991 episode of police drama Shark in the Park.

Smith's career since then has been busy, balancing a long run of screen roles with presenting work, competing on Dancing with the Stars and time on the judging panel for New Zealand's Got Talent.

At high school she acted in fantasy series Mirror, Mirror and starred in TV's The Kina Factory. The programme was made as part of an international series in which varied youth encounter environmental problems. Smith did further roles while studying sport,fitness and public relations at Waikato University, then at 20 joined the cast of Shortland Street.

Playing Māori nurse Awhina Broughton provided a chance to hone her craft, but she did not enjoy the "surreal" experience of being constantly recognised in public. "Six months into the show, I didn't enjoy it anymore." At that level of fame, Smith worried that "you can't relax, you can't fail."

After time overseas, Smith returned home in 2000 to do a post-graduate course in communications and public relations, planning to work in sports marketing. That year she also rediscovered her passion for acting, joining international hit The Tribe, as the feisty leader of an all-female gang, and spending two months in Raratonga for missionary bio-pic The Other Side of Heaven.

In 2001 Smith scored a role that made her realise acting might actually be an ongoing career. Small town drama Mercy Peak saw her playing nurse and solo mother Dana McNichol over three seasons. A number of roles quickly followed: Geoff Murphy thriller Spooked, satirising her time on Shortland Street in TV's Serial Killers (see episode six)m and a double role on Power Rangers, as a PVC-clad beauty and a school principal.

For actors, it can be handy to have a suitcase ready. In 2004 Smith was in Europe in the early stages of an extended OE when asked to audition for short-lived Australian series Last Man Standing. She flew to Melbourne, arriving on a Friday morning, and by the end of the day learnt she would be needed on set the following Monday. Smith played friend and female "reality check" to a cast of romantically-inept males.

She went on to acting nominations for both 2007 movie We're Here to Help — playing supportive partner to Erik Thomson's longtime battler with Inland Revenue — and Margaret Mahy TV fantasy Kaitangata Twitch (2010), in which she played mother to the show's teen heroine. Direct from the challenges of learning two new dances a week on Dancing with the Stars (she made it to the final three), in 2008 Smith joined the judging panel on Prime Television's New Zealand's Got Talent.

One of her most challenging acting roles to date was lawyer Donna Hall in tele-movie Stolen, based on an infamous 2002 child-kidnapping case. She describes Hall as someone "who doesn't suffer fools gladly, she knows what she wants ... she doesn't sit there worrying about what people might think". Following Stolen, Smith acted in Kiwi-made Western Netherwood, and another true life story: in tele-movie Siege she won praise — and a NZ Television Award — for playing Delwyn Keefe, the partner of Napier gunman Jan Molenaar.

In 2015 she scored the role of a lifetime: as hairdresser turned corporate boss Brady Truebridge in high profile series Filthy Rich, whose partner plunges to his death in the first episode. “She believes in a hard day’s work and doesn’t believe in handouts," Smith said of Brady. "She’s very ballsy, pretty tough, witty, clever and actually pretty funny."

Fresh from action series The Dead Lands, Smith was a regular in two shows in 2021: Māori gang drama Vegas, and Australian medical drama Harrow.

Having done time as a live master of ceremonies, Smith has also done presentation duties on a number of television shows, including dating show Finding Aroha (she is a marriage celebrant), House and Garden, tourism show Destination New Zealand and on Māori Television coverage of Waitangi Day.

Profile updated on 3 November 2021

Sources include
'Miriama Smith: On making acting a career' (Video Interview). NZ On Screen website. Director Andrew Whiteside. Loaded June 2012. Accessed 29 May 2012
'Mirama Smith' Lion Rock Management website. Accessed 3 November 2021
Donna Fleming, 'Mercy me' (Interview) – The New Zealand Woman's Weekly, 30 July 2001
Shannon Huse, 'Don't take this lady for granted' (Interview) - The NZ Herald, (View liftout), 7 September 2008, page 9
Carmen Lichi, 'Miriama Smith's city-slicker comeback!' (Interview) - Woman's Day, 16 February 2015
'Miriama Smith' (Interview - broken link) TVNZ website. Accessed 29 May 2012
'Miriama Smith's stolen identity' (Interview - broken link) New Zealand Woman's Weekly website. Loaded 16 August 2010. Accessed 29 May 2012