Taika Waititi

Taika David Cohen was born in New Zealand on 16 August 1975 and took the professional name Taika Waititi. His 2003 short Two Cars, One Night earned an Academy Award nomination and signaled a sensibility that mixed plainspoken warmth with oddball precision. Boy in 2010 and Hunt for the Wilderpeople in 2016 each became the top-grossing film entirely funded and produced in New Zealand, proving a local audience hungry for his voice. In 2014 he co-wrote, co-directed, and starred in the vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows with Jemaine Clement, which later became an Emmy-nominated TV series. Marvel hired him for Thor: Ragnarok in 2017, where he painted over the franchise's self-seriousness with Day-Glo comedy, then brought him back for Love and Thunder in 2022. Between those he wrote, directed, and played an imaginary Adolf Hitler in Jojo Rabbit, which won him the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and a Grammy for its soundtrack. Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2022, by which point he was co-creating Reservation Dogs, starring in Our Flag Means Death, and voicing a droid in The Mandalorian.