Neill Rea

Toi Whakaari graduate Neill Rea first won attention as the likeable if mildly-unhinged Scotty, one of the Dunedin students caught up in crime in hit movie Scarfies (1999). Since then Rea has embarked on a dual career as owner-operator of Auckland casting agency Fly Casting, while taking on a number of television  and voice roles of his own. His work as casting director includes 2012 TV movie What Really Happened - Votes for Women, and movie Kiwi Christmas. In 2014 he starred as Detective Mike Shepherd, in the first of multiple seasons of Prime’s feature-length crime series The Brokenwood Mysteries.

I was lucky enough to meet an Auckland-based police officer who offered to show me around. He was great — he wore a pink shirt and a mismatching tie, and if I could have distilled him and bottled him that would have been the character! Neill Rea on researching his role for The Brokenwood Mysteries, Prime TV website