A bear of a man with pale blue eyes and a voice like aged whisky, Mitchinson has made a career out of playing dangerous men. <\/p>\n
Friends and colleagues describe him as a big softie and \u201ca fabulous human being\u201d who\u2019s a hell of a lot of fun to be around. <\/p>\n
But his ability to transform into an absolutely terrifying presence on screen has seen him take on roles other actors haven\u2019t wanted to touch with a barge pole.<\/p>\n
In The Monster of Mangatiti, a chilling true-crime dramatisation, he played a depraved sexual predator who held a teenager hostage on his remote farm for five months. <\/p>\n
Auckland Theatre Company’s new production of Macbeth will be Mark Mitchinson’s first theatre role since he left drama school in the mid-80s. “People do some terrible things, and I\u2019m moved by this terrible man.” Photo \/ Jason Dorday<\/p>\n
At the time of that awkward dinner-party encounter, he\u2019d just starred in Bloodlines as Colin Bouwer, the South African-born head of psychiatry at Otago University convicted of murdering his wife by slowly poisoning her to death.<\/p>\n
Mitchinson, who was born in England but moved here with his family as a young boy, won Best Actor at the 2011 NZ Television Awards for that one. <\/p>\n
The following year, he won again for his portrayal of Jan Molenaar in Siege, a drama about the Napier gunman who killed one police officer and seriously injured two others in a 51-hour standoff.<\/p>\n
Of all the awful men he\u2019s played \u2013 and there have been many \u2013 Mitchinson has some empathy for Molenaar, \u201ca complex man who lost his shit\u201d. <\/p>\n
He has none for Bouwer, who once told US philosopher and New Yorker writer Carl Elliott that the public would never understand the pain that psychopaths endure. <\/p>\n
Now, Mitchinson is facing what might just be one of his greatest challenges: to inspire compassion for a man who kills his boss, orders a hit on his best friend, has his rival\u2019s young children slaughtered, and is at least partly to blame for his wife\u2019s suicide.<\/p>\n
Whether Macbeth is a tragic hero or a villain has been much debated by Shakespearean scholars. To what extent do the witches\u2019 prophecies ultimately determine his fate?<\/p>\n
Mitchinson leans toward the view that people have to take personal accountability for their actions. \u201cBut in some ways, he\u2019s poisoned by this dream that he can be great again,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the thing with tragedy, you kind of relate to it, right? People do some terrible things, and I\u2019m moved by this terrible man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mark Mitchinson says Macbeth is “one of the greatest roles Shakespeare ever wrote for a man. And Lady Macbeth is one of the greatest roles he ever wrote for a woman.” Photo \/ Jason Dorday<\/p>\n
Anyone who saw director Benjamin Kilby-Henson\u2019s take on Romeo & Juliet last year will know they\u2019re in for another wild ride when Auckland Theatre Company\u2019s production of Macbeth opens this month.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s set Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cOG thriller\u201d in a giant subterranean sewer system, which has become a refuge from an unspecified catastrophe that\u2019s devastated the world above ground. <\/p>\n
Macbeth is an ageing, battle-weary soldier suffering from PTSD. <\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps the witches are not the first vision he\u2019s ever seen,\u201d Kilby-Henson says. <\/p>\n
For Lady Macbeth, played by Sara Wiseman, he\u2019s drawn on studies showing women married to soldiers have a history of self-harm.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something they can control when everything else around them is open to chance,\u201d he says. \u201cSo with Sass, we\u2019re exploring Lady Macbeth being quite dishevelled and then having to put on this mask.\u201d<\/p>\n
In its own way, Macbeth, too, is the story of star-crossed lovers. Legendary art critic Harold Bloom once said it was the most successful marriage Shakespeare had ever written.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to feel and invest in their love, even though it ends with them asunder,\u201d says Kilby-Henson, \u201cand see how broken they are right from the start.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mitchinson and his Macbeth co-star Sara Wiseman first talked to director Benjamin Kilby-Henson seven years ago about joining forces as Shakespeare’s power couple. <\/p>\n
The chemistry between Mitchinson and Wiseman should be electric. <\/p>\n
The pair met in 2017 while filming the psychological thriller, Human Traces, and have been close friends ever since. In fact, they first pitched the concept of a Macbeth collaboration to Kilby-Henson seven years ago.<\/p>\n
One of New Zealand\u2019s most experienced actors, Wiseman made her name in the TV show Mercy Peak, which ran for three seasons, and had a lead role in ATC\u2019s 2024 season of Lucy Prebble\u2019s play The Effect.<\/p>\n
For Mitchinson, this will be his first professional theatre gig since he graduated from drama school in the mid-80s \u2013 and there was a 20-year hiatus when he didn\u2019t do any acting at all.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s since made up for lost time with a string of film and TV credits, including voicing multiple Power Rangers and playing a washed-up, leather-clad rock star in the award-winning comedy web series, High Road, shot on location near his home in Piha. <\/p>\n
So far this year, he\u2019s played an alcoholic in local show Crackhead, a black comedy set in a rehab clinic, and an archaeology professor in Lee Cronin\u2019s The Mummy \u2013 a part the horror film director wrote specifically for him. <\/p>\n
Macbeth director Benjamin Kilby-Henson says Mitchinson has the stage presence that’s vital in Shakespeare. Photo \/ Jason Dorday<\/p>\n
For whatever reason, theatre jobs have never come his way. Now about to turn 60, Mitchinson feels Macbeth is a role he\u2019s aged into. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s battle-worn, he\u2019s weary, and it feels like I\u2019m the right age for that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bigness of the life you\u2019ve had after 60 years means you can go to that place and totally understand it, more in some ways than I did even when we first went to Ben.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of act five, he says, \u2018I\u2019ve lived long enough \u2026 my way of life has fallen into the sea\u2019. I\u2019ve seen so many productions where they play it as a battle, but I think there have been too many battles for Macbeth. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s broken, you know? It should be a kind of lament.\u201d<\/p>\n
Strangely enough, the idea of pre-ordained destiny explored in Macbeth has some uncanny parallels with Mitchinson\u2019s own life. <\/p>\n
His father, who was an Anglican minister, brought the family out to Rotorua in the early 70s. They later moved to Auckland, where both his parents were actively involved in protests against the 1981 Springbok Tour. His big brother, John, a British writer and podcaster, went on to help create the BBC show QI. <\/p>\n
After spending his high-school years at Selwyn College, Mitchinson returned to the United Kingdom and trained at the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted nothing more than to be an actor,\u201d he says. \u201cI wanted it so much.\u201d <\/p>\n
So Mitchinson\u2019s world was rocked when he was told by his teachers \u2013 including legendary voice expert Patsy Rodenburg \u2013 that \u201cit wouldn\u2019t happen for him\u201d until later in life. <\/p>\n
His confidence had already been shaken when he asked a director, who\u2019d come to see one of his student performances, what he thought of the play.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said it was rubbish, and I was completely, utterly devastated. It hardened me, but it also broke me. I walked away from acting and didn\u2019t look back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mitchinson as Napier gunman Jan Molenaar in Siege, 2011.<\/p>\n
Still in his early 20s, he moved to the United States and did a series of interviews for a book on American actors who were also politically active, including Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen and Ed Asner. It\u2019s never been published.<\/p>\n
In Miami Beach, he worked in a vegan restaurant for a while before returning to London and opening The Mars Bar in Covent Garden with a \u201ccrazy Dutch guy\u201d, just as flavoured vodka was becoming all the rage. <\/p>\n
Their signature trick was melting a Mars bar into a bottle of vodka on top of the cappuccino machine.<\/p>\n
The bar took off when one of Mitchinson\u2019s drama school mates, Clive Rowe, was singing in Carousel at a theatre on the West End and brought the whole cast for drinks after the show. <\/p>\n
Blur were regulars, too, recording their latest album just down the road. Oasis threw a party at the bar to celebrate their first No 1 hit. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll of a sudden, we\u2019re the hottest place in town.\u201d<\/p>\n
His next move was a collab with the Poetry Society, inspired by the slam poetry scene he\u2019d seen emerging in New York.<\/p>\n
Called the Poetry Cafe, it combined a vegetarian restaurant with an underground performance space frequented by the likes of poet Ted Hughes. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s where he met British actor Greg Wise and his girlfriend (now wife) Emma Thompson. In the web series High Road, Thompson pops up in a cameo role as the unravelling Terry Huffer\u2019s long-suffering sister.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s just like that,\u201d Mitchinson says, with a laugh. \u201cAlways telling me off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oscar winner Emma Thompson and husband Greg Wise with Mitchinson during filming for the web series High Road.<\/p>\n
Then one day, an oil trader walked into the Poetry Cafe and offered to bankroll a franchise network across the whole country. <\/p>\n
\u201cI thought if I do that, that\u2019s me for the rest of my life. So, I went, \u2018nah, I\u2019m done\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n
Another drama school friend \u2013 a stage manager this time \u2013 had learnt how to programme HTML and was building a website for the band Jamiroquai.<\/p>\n
They hooked up with a third partner to start a new business, Motion Pixels, creating websites for bands like Simple Minds and rolling out the UK Government\u2019s millennium bug campaign. <\/p>\n
Then the dotcom bubble burst. Mitchinson sold his house in England and moved back to New Zealand in 2002, buying a bach in Piha. <\/p>\n
At a party in Auckland, he met producer Tina McLaren \u2013 now group commissioning editor for Sky NZ. Less than a year later, he\u2019d become a stay-at-home dad to the first of their two children. <\/p>\n
Mitchinson with Freya and Buzz at the multi-level “treehouse bach” he bought in Piha before returning from London in 2002. Photo \/ Jason Dorday<\/p>\n
It was his daughter\u2019s godfather, Auckland actor Peter Feeney, who convinced him to audition for a kids\u2019 TV series called The Amazing Extraordinary Friends. The role, a Ray Winstone-style character, was his first part in more than 20 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was an absolute joy,\u201d he says of the show, which ran for three seasons. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe character was an absolute cracker and we just had a ball. It gave me lots of confidence. Then I got Bloodlines and that changed everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
The couple still live in that same Piha bach, flanked by bush and an uninterrupted view of the sea. Justin Harwood, the former Chills bassist who wrote and directed High Road, is one of their neighbours. <\/p>\n
He and Mitchinson ran Radio Piha for a few years from a caravan at the beach, just like Terry Huffer does (well, not exactly like Huffer does). <\/p>\n
Picked up by Lightbox, the show was adapted into an eight-part TV series, although early talk of a feature film fizzled out.<\/p>\n
Mark Mitchinson as Bill Cornelius in The Monster of Mangatiti, 2015.<\/p>\n
Mitchinson likes playing against type in comedy roles, but he\u2019s not haunted by the dark, complex characters he\u2019s often portrayed. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy method is to go in and be very intense, work hard, and then just close the door on those people and walk away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking back, he\u2019s come to accept his drama teachers were right. By the time he made Bloodlines, he was already in his 40s. <\/p>\n
What kind of actor might he have become without that early setback?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d be crap,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo have wanted it so much and had that taken away, then to come back to it with a little less need \u2026 I genuinely don\u2019t care what [the critics] think. That just seems a waste of time to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to just do the work that you can. That\u2019s why I choose the parts other actors don\u2019t want and that people won\u2019t like, because that\u2019s the job, too.\u201d<\/p>\n