Рена Оуэн: Жаңа Зеландия актрисасының өмір жолы мен шығармашылығы

New Zealand actress

Maria Makarena Owen (born 22 July 1962), known professionally as Rena Owen, is a New Zealand actress in theatre, television and film. Owen is best known for her leading role as Beth Heke in Lee Tamahori's Once Were Warriors and as Taun We in George Lucas's Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.

Born in the New Zealand Bay of Islands, Owen is of Welsh, English, Irish, and Māori descent. One of nine children, she grew up in Moerewa, raised Catholic in a small rural town in the North Island's Bay of Islands. She regularly performed in local Maori culture groups and performed in dramas and musicals while in high school. Owen pursued a medical career and trained as a nurse at Auckland Hospital for three and a half years. Once she qualified as a registered nurse, Owen moved to London, England.

Owen trained at the Actors Institute in London in the mid 1980s and worked extensively in British theatre. Highlights include Voices From Prison for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Co Existences for the Elephant Theatre and Outside in for Theater New Zealand, which debuted at the Edinburgh Festival. Owen wrote and starred in Te Awa i Tahuti (The River That Ran Away), which had a successful London tour and was later published by NZ Playmarket in 1991. On her return to New Zealand in 1989, Owen acted in two dramas for Television NZ's E Tipu E Rea series. A first of its kind, the series was written, acted, directed, and produced by Māori, telling Māori stories. She worked extensively in theatre; acting, writing, directing, working as a dramaturge, and was a founding member of Taki Rua Theatre. Owen wrote and starred in Daddy's Girl, In the USA, she has acted in multiple stage readings for Native Voices at the Autry in LA, and a charity stage reading of Vagina Monologues for the City of West Hollywood. She also played the lead in a Hawaiian play called Fine Dancing, adapted and directed Toa Fraser's play Bare for the Asian American Theatre Company in San Francisco (AATC). In Once Were Warriors, Owen played the leading role of Beth Heke alongside Temuera Morrison, who played her husband. Once Were Warriors is predominantly narrated from Beth's perspective, and her performance was praised as "classic". Whilst playing a reoccurring role in WB's Angel, Owen played supporting and cameo roles in multiple international independent films. Highlights include the NZ Canadian co production, Nemesis Game, Garth Maxwell's When Love Comes, Rolf de Heer's acclaimed Dance Me to My Song, Vincent Ward's acclaimed Rain of the Children, and US thrillers Alyce Kills & The Well. She played leading roles in the Australian TV drama series Medivac in 1998 and recently in ABC's The Straits, a multi ethnic crime family drama. She also appeared in A&E's Longmire. In 2011, as part of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, Owen took park in a televised concert called Mika's Aroha Mardi Gras. Owen playing the part of the story teller of at the event, host 15,000 people in an outdoor event in two concerts on one evening. Recently Owen and Morrison completed work on a documentary celebrating the 20 year anniversary of Once Were Warriors. In 2016, Rena was cast in the Freeform thriller series' Siren as Helen, which was premiered on March 29, 2018.

Owen acted as Taun We in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) (in which Temuera Morrison played Jango Fett) and acted in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005) as Nee Alavar. She also worked with the Star Wars Expanded Universe when she reprised her role as Taun We in the video game Star Wars: Republic Commando. In 2021, Owen reprised her role as Taun We in Star Wars: The Bad Batch.