Campion's champions! THE TRUTH ABOUT THE PIANO

The off-key moments that led to the making of a masterpiece

It’s been 30 years since the movie The Piano – Jane Campion’s mud-soaked tale of love and brutality in the New Zealand wilderness – hit the big screen. It won three Oscars, cemented Jane’s place as a trailblazing female fi lmmaker and set the then 11-year-old Anna Paquin on her path to Hollywood fame. Here, we unearth some forgotten facts about the movie that put Aotearoa on the map.

Sam’s a lover at heart

Sam Neill played the part of Alisdair Stewart, the emotionally stunted husband of mail-order bride Ada, but the iconic Kiwi actor recently confessed that at the time he was cast, he thought he was a better fit to play Ada’s tattooed lover George Baines. Alisdair, he thought, was “peculiar”, “deeply troubled” and “very, very strange”, and “I suppose I also felt I had another romantic hero or two still left in me.” Given that the part of windswept George Baines had gone to Harvey Keitel, however, he decided to embrace the role as a challenge.

Getting the axe!