Liddy Holloway

Liddy Holloway played everyone from the chief of a marching team to Hercules' mother. Holloway first began writing for television in the 1970s, during a stint in Australia; her scriptwriting CV would grow to include episodes of Prisoner, Shortland Street, Jackson’s Wharf, City Life, and 11 episodes of Gloss.

Elizabeth Brenda Holloway was born in Wellington in 1947, the daughter of future Labour cabinet minister Phil Holloway. In her teens she traveled to England with her mother, and trained in dance and drama at a nursery school for the Royal Festival Ballet.

She would go on to do spells in journalism, advertising, cartooning, and temping. While raising her children she decided "that if I was going to write for actors, I had better find out what it was exactly they did". She joined a theatre company, and began the first of a number of stints in Australia. It was there that her double-pronged career as a screen actor and scriptwriter began. Her first Australian script was in 1981, for police show Cop Shop; she also acted in long-running Aussie soaps The Sullivans and Prisoner.

In 1982 she joined an ensemble of Kiwi talents for stage satire Eros and Psyche, as a married woman caught up in romance with the theatre's resident philanderer. Holloway was at one point in line to co-star with Sam Neill in a TV adaptation of mining novel Coal Flat, but the project was cancelled close to production.

By the mid 1980s she was based back in New Zealand, juggling a multitude of television jobs. Between 1983 and 1987 she wrote episodes of drama Seekers, 40s-era show Country GP, and successfully proposed the concept for Open House, set in an urban community house. The bicultural innovations of this 38 episode series predated those of Shortland Street by five years. She would go on to write the first episode of teen horse drama Riding High, and contribute to kidult coproduction Deepwater Haven. 

On screen, Holloway also found time to appear as the cheerful marching coach in groundbreaking female-led series The Marching Girls, played mother to real-life singer Kim Willoughby in movie Queen City Rocker, and appeared in this Emmy-nominated episode of Hanlon. 

In 1992 Holloway found herself acting on two competing shows: TVNZ’s Shortland Street and TV3’s Homeward Bound. Shortland Street first screened in May 1992, a month before Homeward Bound. Holloway would spend many years on Shortland, playing Alex McKenna — mother to Angela Bloomfield’s character, and wife to the boss of the A and E clinic, Michael McKenna. Holloway's on-screen husband Paul Gittins later joked that she made sure to write herself the best lines during their on-screen arguments.

Homeward Bound had originally competed in a funding battle with Shortland Street for a new five-day-a-week soap. After Shortland won the battle, Homeward Bound was redeveloped as a short-lived once-a-week drama. Based around a family living on rural land close to Auckland, it gave Holloway one of the primary roles: that of Janine Johnstone, a stifled, occasionally impatient mother of four who lives in a small rural community. She also found time to write dialogue for three episodes.

Holloway worked on a number of American productions shot which did shoots downunder — including big screen comedy Without a Paddle and TV movie Murder in Greenwich. But she is probably most recognized internationally for another role: Alcmene, mother of the hero in the long-running Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Playing a loving all-American style mother — and fighting off the occasional tentacled creature — made for "a great job and a lot of fun".

In 2001 she was nominated for a NZ Film Best Supporting Actress Award, for her portrayal of busybody Virginia Hobson in 50s era coming of age story Her Majesty. Two years later, Holloway played mother to the central character in Skin and Bone, Greg McGee’s TV reboot of his classic play Foreskin’s Lament.

Holloway was one of the first to spot the cinematic potential of 1987 novel Whale Rider. She worked with author Witi Ihimaera on two early drafts of a potential script. In January 2004 she began legal proceedings against the NZ Film Commission, claiming that the commission had failed to fulfill Holloway’s contractual obligations when they took over the rights to the film.

Holloway died that same year on 29 December — a year after her father — following a fight with liver cancer. After her death, she was nominated for her work in movie Fracture. She played Gwen, who loyally supports her daughter-in-law after a serious injury. Filmed in 2002, the film had its world premiere in April 2004.

Two of her three children followed her into the business: actor Joel Tobeck and assistant director Mark Harlen. Grandson Geordie Holibar did an extended run as an actor on Shortland Street.

Profile updated on 28 February 2023

Sources include
Joel Tobeck
Renee Kiriona, ‘Whale Rider dispute goes to court’- The NZ Herald, 29 January 2004
Trisha Dunleavy, Ourselves in Primetime: A History of New Zealand Television Drama (Auckland University Press, 2005)
Robert Weisbrot, Hercules The Legendary Journeys - The Official  Companion (New York: Doubleday, 1998) 
Unknown writer, 'Liddy Holloway' (Interview) Shortland Street website. Accessed 24 February 2023
Homeward Bound press kit