Graham McTavish

Before Graham McTavish was wielding swords in The Hobbit, riding through the Highlands in Outlander, or stepping into the brutal world of Spartacus, he was simply a man following one wild, irrational, deeply human instinct: to leap toward the thing that made him feel most alive.

In my interview with him he spoke about New Zealand the way a child speaks about a dream, as a place drawn from imagination, where oceans, forests, and volcanoes sit side-by-side like pages in a storybook. “It’s Neverland,” he told me.

When I asked how he chooses roles, he laughed and said becoming an actor at all was his biggest creative risk — “vaguely ridiculous,” in his words. And yet running around in armor, covered in dirt, holding a gladius, pretending to be a Roman general, somehow became a career, a calling.

I was fascinated by how he approaches characters often labeled as villains. He never plays them as evil. He plays them as human — men who justify their choices, men who believe they’re doing good, men whose darkness comes from vulnerability rather than caricature. “People who do bad things never think they’re doing bad things,” he said. That complexity is what pulls him toward the story.

And behind all the travel — Paris, Morocco, New Zealand — his films, his writing, creating his whiskey brand, his one-man show, there was one mountain he named as the greatest of his life: Being a father.

He returns to New Zealand for one reason: His daughter lives there. He lights up when he talks about both of his girls — guiding them, shaping them, wanting them to face the world with strength and fullness. Being a Dad is the role he takes most seriously.

Graham reminded me that a meaningful life rarely comes from perfect planning. It comes from curiosity and courage — from the grace of not knowing how hard something will be, and doing it anyway.

It comes from choosing wonder over fear, adventure over certainty, and deep love over everything else.