Peter Jackson - Early Life

Early Life

Jackson was born on 31 October 1961. He grew up in Pukerua Bay, a coastal town near Wellington. His parents - Joan (born Ruck), a factory worker and housewife, and William (Bill) Jackson, a wages clerk - were both immigrants from England. His father was a veteran of the Siege of Malta in World War II. As a child, Jackson was a keen film fan, growing up on Ray Harryhausen films as well as finding inspiration in the television series Thunderbirds and Monty Python's Flying Circus. After a family friend gave the Jacksons a Super 8 cine-camera with Peter in mind, he began making short films with his friends. Jackson has long cited King Kong as his favourite film and around the age of nine he attempted to remake it using his own stop-motion models. Also as a child Jackson made a WWII epic and a James Bond spoof named Coldfinger. Most notably though was a 20 minute short called The Valley which won him a special prize because of the shots he used.

In school Jackson expressed no interest (or skill) in sports. His classmates also remember him wearing a Duffel coat with "an obsession verging on religious." Jackson had no formal training in film-making, but learned about editing, special effects and make-up largely through his own trial and error. As a young adult Jackson discovered the work of author J. R. R. Tolkien after watching The Lord of the Rings (1978), an animated film by Ralph Bakshi that was a part-adaptation of Tolkien's fantasy trilogy. When he was 16 years old, Jackson left school and began working full-time as a photo-engraver for the local newspaper. For the 7 years he worked there, Jackson lived at home with his parents so he could save as much money as possible to spend on film equipment. After two years of work Jackson bought a 16 mm camera, and began shooting a short film that later became Bad Taste.