Julie Christie

Dame Julie Christie began in newspaper journalism, before moving into television in the late 1980s. In 1991 she set up company Touchdown Productions, where she proudly "developed a sustainable business" and sold many shows overseas. After 16 years, Dame Julie sold Touchdown to Dutch media group Eyeworks. She stayed on as Chief Executive of Eyeworks New Zealand until late 2012.

Growing up in Greymouth, she was the fifth of seven children. Her Irish Catholic mother — "a woman with a tremendous work ethic" — was widowed when Julie was five, after her mechanic father died from complications following a brain haemmorhage. Her love affair with television began early; much of it was local content. "I only remember New Zealand television really as a child." She counts herself fortunate that she developed a common touch, and "came to understand what most people like most of the time”.

Dame Julie completed a one year journalism course at Wellington Polytechnic: "it only involved one year of poverty". After nine years subediting newspapers in Wellington, Christchurch and London, she returned to sub The Auckland Sun's sport section, and eventually became the paper's TV writer.

Television happened by accident. After the Sun folded in 1988, she got a two week gig at company Communicado, as a production assistant on a corporate video — where she began learning about storytelling from Communicado boss Neil Roberts. Roberts soon offered her a job as a researcher. In this extended interview, Dame Julie credits this as the moment she realised that television was where she wanted to be. “Literally the lights went on. I went 'Wow  — I can do this! This is me'." 

She quickly became one of the company's most prolific producers, putting up her hand to produce documentary series Mud and Glory: Great Rugby Stories. She followed it with one-off documentary Rachel Hunter: Cover Girl, and managed to persuade Rod Stewart to do an interview.

After the doco won record ratings, Dame Julie asked for a pay rise, but got turned down. So in 1991 she left and formed Touchdown Productions. Within a few years it had grown into one of New Zealand's biggest producers of unscripted television, with a thriving business in exporting programme formats. Dame Julie became "a lot more staunch" about retaining intellectual property rights in 1996, when "three programmes I had created were taken from me to be produced in-house at TVNZ". The decision "nearly broke my company".

It also led to the discovery that you didn't necessarily need to own the IP outright. "You just have to control the royalties from it. That was how I created a different type of TV business  . . .  that knowledge of IP and how to exploit it, set me up for everything I’ve done since, and helps with my board work."

She also believes that "perfecting the execution" is as important as the idea itself; she notes that after her shows were taken in-house by the newly-arrived Australian programmer, "none of those programmes lasted more than a year". 

Dame Julie also took on long-running documentary series This is Your Life, as a writer and producer, and won two NZ Television Awards in the process. She says that showcasing "remarkable New Zealanders" on the show proved to be “the most stressful but the most rewarding part of my career”. Dame Julie worked on one instalment just days after giving birth.

By the time Dutch company Eyeworks bought Touchdown Productions in 2006, the company's content had been franchised to 29 countries. Dame Julie continued as Chief Executive for another six years.

Many Touchdown programmes became staples of local television schedules — multiple seasons of My House My Castle, DIY Rescue, and Trading Places, and successful exports So You Wannabe a Popstar, Going Straight and Treasure Island. Touchdown also retooled overseas formats for local audiences, including the long-running Changing Rooms — "the first show that merged a game show with a lifestyle show"—gardening show Ground Force, living in the past chronicle Pioneer House, the Big Brother-style Captive, and Dragons' Den New Zealand, on which Dame Julie was among the backers deciding which entrepreneurs to invest in. In 2012 she won an NZ TV Award for her work directing the first season of The Block NZ.

Dame Julie feels there is a snobbery in the media about reality shows, and argues that "unscripted television tells you an enormous amount about ourselves culturally. Because it presents us, flaws and all."

Touchdown's programmes made stars out of some of their presenters, including April Ieremia and partners in crime Matthew Ridge and Marc Ellis (Fresh-up in the Deep End, Matthew & Marc's Rocky Road to..., and Game of Two Halves, which ran 11 seasons). While some shows failed to find success (eg The Player, starring Nicky Watson), others dared to turn reality television on its head (Living the Dream, in which an unsuspecting contestant was surrounded by actors). TV3 hit Police Stop! was one of the country's earliest unscripted shows featuring cops and errant drivers.

In 2001 Touchdown began to exploit its formats overseas. As Dame Julie says, "making it internationally mattered". "I realised that if I was licensing formats from other producers, then people would license formats from me. That’s how my international business started."

The company's first American pitch — and sale — was High Country Dance (which she wrote, directed, and produced). It captured a single farmers’ event in Otago. The idea was reborn for the Fox Network as series Looking For Love: Bachelorettes in Alaska. "The US market is wonderfully open to ideas from outside. They have a voracious appetite and unscripted television is a vital part of everyday life to them."

Quiz show The Chair debuted on American network ABC in 2002, followed three months later by the Kiwi version. The show's gimmick was that contestants weren't allowed to answer the question until they could control their heart rate. In 2002 Dame Julie launched legal action against Fox game show The Chamber; Fox had been pitched The Chair earlier and had tried to buy it, but she had chosen to go with ABC. Although the American version of The Chair lasted less than a season, the format sold to 29 countries, including the BBC, VOX in Germany and TF1 in France. 

Further international success followed with productions of Treasure Island for RTE Ireland and Australia's Channel 7. Dame Julie found herself spending a lot of time on aeroplanes.

Later Robin Scholes arrived, to set up a fiction department at Touchdown. "Robin Scholes had been a great mentor when I was at Communicado. We used to just watch Robin in awe: her energy, and the way she held that place together . . . she kind of talked me into it. She said 'You know you need to do this . . . you can take your success to drama' ". The result was four movies — Mr Pip, Love Birds, The Tattooist, and The Hopes and Dreams of Gazza Snell — and darkly comic TV series Burying Brian.

Post Touchdown, Dame Julie spent four years on the board of directors at MediaWorks, owners of TV3. She left in 2014 to concentrate on other ventures. Deciding that she'd retired too early, she stepped back into the screen game in 2021 by purchasing a majority stake in natural history documentary makers NHNZ. In early 2023 she purchased the remaining 40 percent of the company from Canada's Blue Ant Media. She has "always wanted to make television for the world in New Zealand, and that's what NHNZ have always done".

Dame Julie has won two NZ Television Awards for Best Entertainment Programme, two Qantas Media Awards for Best Lifestyle series, and People's Choice Awards for Game of Two Halves and DIY Rescue. She took away WIFT's 2004 Award for International Television Achievement, and chaired the Government's Screen Production Industry Taskforce. She was the first Kiwi recipient of the Veuve Clicquot Award, which celebrates female entrepreneurship.

In 2007 Dame Julie was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to television. In 2017 she became a Dame Companion, this time for television and governance. At the 2024 NZ Television Awards she was named 2024's TV Legend.

Dame Julie has done time on the boards of the 2011 Rugby World Cup board, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the Flag Consideration Panel and the New Zealand Story Group, which oversees the Silver Fern trademark. She has also encouraged Kiwi trade opportunities via World Expo 2020, and chaired the 2021 Women's Rugby World Cup.

Her past business interests have included pay TV channels Living and Food (she sold both to Discovery in 2014), Auckland restaurants Oyster & Chop, and Sky Sport Grill, and a Fijian resort purchased for Australian reality series The Resort, and sold in 2014.

Profile updated on 29 November 2024

Sources include
'ScreenTalk Legends - Julie Christie' (Video Interview) NZ On Screen website. Director Kathryn Quirk. Loaded 15 August 2024. Accessed 15 August 2024
Eyeworks website (broken link). Accessed 16 March 2015
Emily Brookes, 'I Wish ... Julie Christie' (Interview) - Sunday, 28 January 2024, page 3
Daniel Dunkley, 'My Net Worth: Julie Christie, chief executive, NHNZ worldwide' (Interview) BusinessDesk website. Loaded 3 October 2021. Accessed 30 October 2024
Karen Tay, 'Small screen queen' (Interview) - The Sunday Star-Times, 29 November 2009
Matthew Theunisson, 'Queen's Birthday Honours: Reality TV queen Julie Christie is now a Dame' (Interview) - The NZ Herald, 5 June 2017
Diana Wichtel, 'Reality queen' (Interview) - The Listener, 10 June 2006 (issue 3448)
Unknown writer, 'Confessions of a Coaster' (Interview) NZBusiness website. Loaded 11 February 2018. Accessed 30 October 2024 
Unknown writer, 'Julie Christie: TV is a business not an art' (Interview) - The Australian Women's Weekly, 5 August 2016
Unknown writer, 'Julie Christie' (Interview). Her magazine website (broken link). Accessed 16 March 2015
'Minister congratulates honours' recipients' (press release) Beehive website. Loaded 5 June 2017. Accessed 30 October 2024