Film-maker and writer Fran Walsh receives Damehood in Queen's Birthday Honours

Описание: VOLTA VOD"I'm delighted to be finally level-pegging with Pete!" says Fran Walsh of her investiture as a Dame, announced as part of the 2019 Queens Birthday Honours list. "At least that's my understanding of what's occurring." She jests, but it's hard not to agree with her assessment. Walsh was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) in 2002, the same year that her personal and professional partner, Peter Jackson, was given the higher title of Companion.  Jackson has been Sir Peter since 2009, but it's taken a full 17 years - 17 years in which the pair jointly won two Oscars and two Baftas (and Walsh won one of each, for original songwriting, without Jackson) - for Walsh to be recognised in the same way. READ MORE: * Kiwis Jane Campion and Peter Jackson outrank Martin Scorsese as screenwriters * Peter Jackson signs New Zealand actors for his next film, Mortal Engines * Five films Peter Jackson should make * 'I want to tell Kiwi stories': Peter Jackson "Pete's a director," Walsh points out. "I am not. Engaging with the media is a function of his job." Walsh - screenwriter, producer, lyricist, some-time second unit director, and the force behind Jackson's first serious feature (and source of the duo's first Oscar nomination), Heavenly Creatures - has deliberately eschewed that function since the pair first worked together on 1987's Bad Taste, saying in previous interviews that she felt one of them had to stay out of the limelight for the sake of their family. She's also shy, admitting to Brooks Barnes of the New York Times in a vanishingly rare interview (she answered my questions via email) that she "doesn't like positive attention." But with their two children now in their early 20s, perhaps the moment has arrived for Dame Fran to let at least one spot fall on her. Walsh was a punk rocker before she was a film-maker.  Having given up on an original plan of fashion design, she studied English Literature at Victoria University of Wellington while writing, playing and singing for a band called the Wallsockets (she would later put her punk scream to use as the Ringwraiths' screach in the Lord of the Rings trilogy).  She started out writing for TV in the mid-80s, which led her to Jackson and his splatter movies. "I fell into screenwriting, never imagining it would become a full time job, let alone a career," she says now. Even today becoming a career film-maker is a pipe dream for most, but 30 years ago, when New Zealand didn't really have a film industry to speak of, it was the stuff of fantasy. It was Jackson and his cohort's pursuit of that fantasy that led to New Zealand, and Wellington in particular, becoming the disproportionate force in global cinema that they are.  But surely it must have tempting at times to jump ship and move to Hollywood. "As our film industry grew, there were many ups and downs," acknowledges Walsh, "but I've never regretted the choice to stay in New Zealand." She calls Kiwis "born storytellers," and says "th