Craig Walsh-Wrightson

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Role

Actor

Craig Walsh-Wrightson

Biography

New Zealand-born Craig Walsh-Wrightson was educated partly in England. A summa cum laude student, he declined a Charterhouse Scholarship to return home, later completing a double Bachelor's degree in History and English Literature from Victoria University of Wellington, while also reading Politics, French and Economics. During post-graduate studies in Modern History, he was recruited by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation as a documentary-maker, then headhunted by a national advertising agency as a writer/TV producer. At age 24 he co-founded January Productions, Australasia's first multi-media creative consultancy and production house, which partnership developed into a top advertising agency, Campaign Advertising Group. Ten years later Craig and his partners sold to UK interests and Campaign became Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand with Craig as Executive Creative Director. Craig has written, produced (and occasionally directed) over 100 major television commercials. As a composer, lyricist and music producer, he has also created dozens of radio and TV commercial music soundtracks. He is a multi-AXIS Award winner (the NZ equivalent of the U.S. advertising industry's 'Clio' awards) as a writer, art director, producer, and film director. As anchorman/interviewer he fronted the prime time TVNZ series 'Money Go Round'. An award-winning international voice-over artist and narrator, Craig's credits include Cadbury's, Coca Cola, Lexus, L'Oreal, Vodafone, Repsol, CBS Records. EMI, Mitsubishi, McDonalds, Suzuki and BNZ. Plus: NZ Book Council's 'Going West' animated cinema commercial (Gold Lion at Cannes), and Television New Zealand's 6 x 90-minutes millenium production 'Our People. Our Century' ('Best Documentary', NZFTA Awards). Obviously, given such busy former lives, Craig came late to screen acting as a career, but quickly established his reputation as a charismatic performer on series such as 'Xena Warrior Princess', 'Outrageous Fortune', 'Burying Brian', 'The Pretender' and Disney's 'Legend of the Seeker'. In what was to be a brief guest role in Starz USA's first 'Spartacus' season, Craig's characterisation so impressed the showrunners - especially in his intense scenes with John Hannah's 'Bataiatus' and Lucy Lawless' 'Lucrezia' - that his character 'Solonius' was written into 8 of the 13 episodes... culminating in a magnificent death-duel with 'Spartacus' himself. And then 'Solonius' returned to life, for all 6 episodes of the top-rating Prequel season 'Spartacus Gods of the Arena' - sold to 150 countries even before its Netflix debut. Subsequent portrayals by Craig include British general Sir Charles Monro in the mini-series 'Deadline Gallipoli', French Minister of Defence Charles Hernu in the Netflix movie 'Bombshell: The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior', and Emperor Tiberius in season two ('Caligula') of the Netflix Original series 'Roman Empire'.

Known For

Spartacus
Spartacus
8.8
8.8
Roman Empire
Roman Empire
6.5
6.5

Filmography

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Role: Partygoer
Yellow Roses
Yellow Roses
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Role: John
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