Keisha Castle Hughes Biography

Keisha Castle HughesKeisha Castle Hughes is an Australian-born teenage actress best known for her feature role as Paikea Apirana in 2002's family drama Whale Rider. For her portrayal of Paikea Apirana she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination in 2004 when she was thirteen, becoming the youngest Best Actress nominee in the Oscar's history.Castle Hughes was born on March 24, 1990, in Donnybrook, Western Australia. Her parents, Australian father Tim Castle and New Zealand Maori Desrae Hughes, met in but moved from the country to New Zealand when the actress was four. She has two younger brothers, Rhys and Liam. Her parents remained together for nine years even though they never married.Castle Hughes was discovered for the movie Whale Rider when she was eleven years old by the casting director and casting assistant who visited her primary school in Mt. Wellington, New Zealand. Even though she had no acting skills, she was chosen among several hundred students to star in the main role of Paikea Apirana. She has been quoted as saying that one of the biggest challenges of filming Whale Rider was having to walk around barefoot all of the time.After the filming of Whale Rider Castle Hughes went on to appear as an Arab-American girl in Prince's controversial music video for the song Cinnamon Girl in 2004, which follows the hardships and confusion her character faces in a post-September 11, environment.In 2005, Castle Hughes played Queen Apailana in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, where she filmed all of her scenes in just one day. It took her seven hours to get all of her make-up applied for her role. The young actress starred alongside such actors as Ewan MacGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Frank Oz (voicing Yoda), Christopher Lee, and Samuel L Jackson.In 2006, Castle Hughes starred as the Virgin Mary in The Nativity Story, co-starring Shohreh Aghdashloo. It has been said that Pope Benedict XVI turned down an invitation to attend the screening of the movie because he was embarrassed that a sixteen-year-old actress who is expecting a child out of wedlock was playing the Holy Mary.Castle Hughes had her first child in April of 2007 with her boyfriend of three years, Bradley Hull. In 2007, she will play Sunni in the comedy/drama Hey, Hey, It's Esther Blueburger, a movie about a thirteen-year-old girl trying to fit into both a posh private school and an ordinary public school. Castle Hughes began filming for this movie in October 2006.