Bruce Allpress

While growing up in Dunedin, Bruce Allpress was taken to see some amateur theatre by his mother, and told himself he could do better.

Allpress looks to have made his television debut in 1965, as one of the performers on Ossie Cheesman's music show The Cheesman Singer Series. Later — after appearing in hit 1976 show Hunter's Gold, as the gold prospector sought out by the young hero — he got the chance to hone his acting skills over a couple of years of Close to Home. This time he played a demolition expert. Working on a twice-weekly soap was "a pretty good way of keeping on your toes — you learn scripts very rapidly, and you don't miss your marks too often."

Allpress went on to long list of supporting parts on-screen, and a starring role as Jocko the shearer, on two award-winning seasons of Jocko. Regularly called upon to play no-nonsense, straight-talking Kiwis, Allpress played many working class men, plus his share of policemen, judges, and a real-life Chief of Defence.

In the late 1970s Television New Zealand produced a number of tele-movies, hoping to mine some viable television series from the results. One of them was 1980's High Country, which revolved around a nomadic shepherd known as Jocko. Auditioning for the role, Allpress pulled out a tobacco pouch and rolled a fag. As he said in this 2011 video interview, "apparently that was the thing that nailed it". Allpress would also nail two Feltex Best Actor awards from the series that followed.

The first season of Jocko went to air in 1980. Scripted by Julian Dickon, creator of working class series Pukemanu, the show's central character evoked the bushman myth common to both Australia and New Zealand. Jocko — "laconic, resourceful, disrespectful of authority and rarely solvent", as author Trisha Dunleavy puts it — travelled the country with his aging friend China (Desmond Kelly) making a barebones living as a drover, shearer and labourer.

Initially this "quintessential New Zealand character" got around on a horse. But after a season of one-hour episodes, cost-savings in the second (half-hour) series saw Jocko and China based in the fictional town of Middleborough, supposedly thanks to a broken-down truck. Allpress had fond memories of the shoot, and of the efficiency of director Mark DeFriest, who carried a computer in the days before they were the norm.

Allpress also enjoyed another very Kiwi project: 1981 movie The Scarecrow, based on Ronald Hugh Morrieson's classic coming of age novel. As part of an award-winning ensemble, he played the comically down-on-his-luck Uncle Athol. "I was also third assistant director on it, because we all needed money." Allpress had a small part in a second Ronald Hugh Morrieson tale, hit comedy Came a Hot Friday.

He played cops in 80s movies Beyond Reasonable Doubt and Bad Blood, and a judge in a number of episodes of Hanlon, including debut episode 'In Defence of Minnie Dean'. Hanlon was the brainchild of director Wayne Tourell. "Wayne has always been an actor's director. I remember him saying to me 'you've played them like that before. Find somebody new.' And collectively we did. He did that with a lot of people."

Known for his sense of humour, Allpress joined character-based cop show Mortimer's Patch after whipping out his false teeth at an audition, to show he was old enough to play the role (Sparky, "the little informant who would do anything for a packet of fags"). He was one of the regulars on 80s comedy Rabbiters Rest (see his bespectacled monologue in the second clip of this episode), and described working with Billy T James as more party than work. Allpress also appeared in miniseries Fallout (as real-life defence force chief Ewan Jamieson), Jane Campion classic The Piano (in a small role as "the blind piano tuner"), and TV thriller The Cult (as a hermit living in the bush — he can be seen in the fifth clip of this first episode).

He played varied roles on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (including father to Michael Hurst's character), was dad to the hero in the opening and closing episodes of Terry and the Gunrunners, and had a walk-on, roll-off part in the first season of Spartacus. As mentioned late in this interview, he also tackled an annoyingly ill-defined role on Tolkien epic The Two Towers. 

In 2010 Allpress was invited to join a "star-studded cast of the over 60s" for retirement home comedy Rest for the Wicked. The same year he had a memorable starring role opposite Boy discovery James Rolleston, in short film Frosty Man and the BMX Kid. In 2012 he acted in darkly comic environmental tale Inorganic. 

Allpress also did many years in textile design, and ran an antique store in his longtime suburb of Albany in Auckland. Bruce Allpress died on 23 April 2020. He was 89. 

Profile updated on 17 November 2023 

Sources include
'Bruce Allpress: A Kiwi character' (Video Interview), NZ On Screen Website. Director Andrew Whiteside. Loaded 13 February 2012. Accessed 13 July 2023
Robert Boyd-Bell, New Zealand Television - The First 25 Years (Auckland: Reed Methuen Publishers, 1985)
Trisha Dunleavy, Ourselves in Primetime - A History of New Zealand Television Drama (Auckland University Press, 2005)
Helen Martin and Sam Edwards, New Zealand Film 1912 - 1996 (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1997)
Unknown writer, 'Icon' Kiwi actor Bruce Allpress who 'fought to the end' dies at 89' Stuff website. Loaded 25 April 2020. Accessed 25 April 2020
Unknown writer, 'Kiwi actor Bruce Allpress who starred in Close to Home dies aged 89' - The NZ Herald, 25 April 2020