Fans and media crowded outside hoping for a glimpse of film star Chris Pine.

A fan is taking a selfie as Hollywood actor Chris Pine leaves Ashburton District Court after pleading guilty to drink-driving,

Quiet please. Action.

The set is the Ashburton District Court, its white frontage and green doors lit by sun.

A throng of reporters, camera people, sightseers, and teenage girls are waiting for the star.

Dean Kozanic ASHBURTON DISTRICT COURT: Fans and media crowded outside hoping for a glimpse of film star Chris Pine.

Then the white 4WD glides to a halt and the Hollywood heart-throb emerges in a fashionably cut denim jacket, white shirt and jeans.

He is wearing sunglasses, his hair is swept back and his beard is neatly trimmed.

A girl yells, "Oh my god".

Joelle Dally STAR STRUCK: Harriet Lane, 16, with her Chris Pine signed Star Trek DVD. "I'm still shaking."

As luck would have it, Charlotte Muir, 13, of Ashburton College has a teacher-only day. "It's fate," she says.

Pine, who has been filming Z for Zachariah in the South Island, enters the court and sits in the front row of the gallery on a blue seat reserved for him. He looks pale and buttoned down.

Judge Joanna Maze looks out, not fondly, on a public gallery, half-filled with visiting media. The local media have got in early to fill the allocated press bench.

ANTHONY HARVEY/Getty Images HOLLYWOOD STAR: Chris Pine, photographed in London in January.

Pine's lawyer, Marilyn Gilchrist, in a blue dress and black jacket, shuffles her papers.

Judge Maze hears submissions on media applications to photograph and film the proceedings but she is having none of it. Open justice, she says, can be served by reporters covering the proceeding in the normal way.

Her court is not a film studio, she says.

Pine's case is called. He enters the dock, the epitome of the contrite, penitent star. The high dock emphasises his big hirsute head. A police officer mumbles his way through the charge. It happened on March 1 at 3.27am in Methven. Pine was driving from a party to his accommodation, a trip of two kilometres, when he was stopped at a police checkpoint. He failed the breath test. A blood test recorded 113mg/100ml. The legal limit is 80.

Gilchrist rises to her feet to call for a discharge without conviction, saying her client has suffered enough for his self-described "foolish action" and a conviction would damage his image and his ability to work in places like Canada. She lambasts the media coverage and says she would have applied for name suppression had details of the charge not been "leaked". She says he has more than made amends and even filmed a promotion video for New Zealand.

Maze is sympathetic but says the case is not sufficiently unusual to reach the threshold of the punishment being out of proportion to the crime.

She recognises Pine's remorse, the donation (about $2000) he has made to Cure Kids and his "commendable" acceptance of responsibility. She enters a conviction and disqualifies him from driving for six months and orders him to pay $93 reparation for the blood test. Pine appears philosophical and he gives Gilchrist a hug before going to meet the waiting mob. He pushes his way through to the white 4WD.

"I touched his beard," squeals Muir.

Pine soothes the horde. Be cool, he says, asking people to stop pushing.

"It's all going to be OK. I'm right here," he said. Harriet Lane, 16, is thrilled when Pine signs her Star Trek DVD and minutes afterwards is still shaking.

She plans to frame the DVD and buy another copy to watch. "He was so nice," she says.

"We thought he was just going to walk out like he did going in. I'm very happy. I'm still shaking."

His drink-driving conviction will not stop her watching his movies, she says.

"I think now he's learnt his lesson. Everyone makes mistakes," Lane said.