For the past decade I have exclaimed one sentence more often than I ever thought I would: "Hey! They were on Shortland Street!" Shortland Street is a New Zealand soap opera that has run since 1992. When I was a teenager living in the UK it was one of my shows. When Peter Jackson came out with The Frighteners in 1996 I loved the fact that it featured some of my favorite soap opera actors. In fact the wife of Michael J Fox's lead character was played by Angela Bloomfield, who played Rachel McKenna on Shortland Street, one of the longest running characters. Bizarrely, it was the connection between my New Zealand soap opera, its New Zealand cast, and a New Zealand born Hollywood movie director hat helped me come to grips with just how big and yet small the big wide world actually was. It blew my mind.

Ever since then I have chuckled to myself every time an actor from my soap has appeared in a main stream movie. It gives me an obscure link to this country that is so far removed from my sphere of existence. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was a three part reunion special. Here are just a few of the Shortland Street characters that have become beloved in the Geek universe:

And this only begins to scratch the surface of the debt Geekdom owes to the acting break that is Shortland Street. If you know of any more, please, let me know!