New Year Honours 2024: Acting great Sir Ian Mune made knight companion of New Zealand Order of Merit

At 82, the acting great has countless accolades to his name, from an OBE to multiple awards and Television Legend status, but he doesn’t want to get “too carried away with the formalities”.

At the time of writing, Mune hadn’t yet told his family the news but knew exactly what their reaction would be.

“Some of them will have to work out what it all means,” he tells the Herald. “But the kids will be thinking what I’m thinking - which is that I wish my wife was here.”

He has a chuckle as he realises “she would be Lady Jo”.

Mune, who lost his beloved wife Josie eight years ago, reveals he “gave up making movies” after her death and found solace in art.

“So I picked up the paint brushes and I’ve been painting pretty much full time ever since,” he says, adding that what he loves about painting is that “nobody can tell me I’m doing it wrong”.

“They can say they don’t like it, but it’s something you do on your own. All the other work I’ve done - acting, writing, directing - everything’s a team effort.”

He’s hesitant to say he’s proud of his acting work, preferring to “think about it in terms of what I enjoy most”.

“For theatre, I’d say what I enjoyed most was doing the big Shakespeare parts - King Lear and the others. And for movies, Came a Hot Friday, Sleeping Dogs, and I did a lot of work on Goodbye Pork Pie on the script, but I wasn’t there for the shoot.”

When it comes to his most recent acting projects, he notes with a laugh “I play people who die”.

“I think the three things I’ve done in the last eight years where I haven’t died have been two commercials - people don’t tend to die in commercials - and one TV series,” he says, referring to 2021 mini-series The Pact.

“It was very heavy stuff. I was with Irene Wood and she had oncoming dementia and chose to die and I chose to die with her, and then at the last minute I chickened out. So I managed to get through to the end of that series still alive,” he says with another laugh.

“Apart from that, I’m either dead by the end or I die in the last season.”

And though times have changed since Mune first took to the stage, his advice to aspiring young Kiwi actors is to learn their craft at drama school.

“I’ve been teaching actors lately, and I’ve found a lot of them don’t do any stage work, which in my world is really weird - because as a young actor, everybody worked stage, and then it was something special to get a TV job or a movie job,” he says.

“Now, kids can find themselves going to auditions and getting parts in TV series before they’ve even learned how to read a sonnet. It’s a different world.”

Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM)

For services to Christian music production

CNZM

For services to Christian music production

Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM)

For services to performing arts education

ONZM

For services to dance

ONZM

For services to the arts

Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM)

For services to Pacific arts

MNZM

For services to the arts and local government

MNZM

For services to arts and the community

MNZM

For services to the arts

MNZM

For services to art and education

MNZM

For services to Pacific arts

MNZM

For services to Māori music

The Queen’s Service Medal (QSM)

For services to theatre

QSM

For services to the community and the arts

QSM

For services to music

QSM

For services to seniors and dance