Philippa Boyens

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Philippa Boyens has three children, and every one of them has turned up on screen in a film she helped write. Boyens is a screenwriter from New Zealand who spent years working in theatre long before she ever touched a shooting script for the big screen. How she moved from a theatre stage into the screenwriting team behind The Lord of the Rings is one question this documentary answers. Why her own family kept turning up in that same body of work is another.

• 2. A Government-Funded Start

  ›

  The record gives two different birth years for her, 1962 in one place and 1963 in another. Both point to the early 1960s in New Zealand. Her parents are named as John Fraser Boyens and Jane Moana Menhennet. Boyens was educated at Massey High School, then studied part time at the University of Auckland, earning a BA in English and history in 1994. After finishing her degree, she joined a theatre company, and for a period her wages there were paid by the government through a PEP scheme. Before she ever wrote a line of screenplay, she worked in theatre as a playwright, a teacher, a producer and an editor. That grounding in theatre eventually put her in the room when Jackson began assembling a team to adapt Tolkien's books for the screen.

• 3. A Childhood Devotion To Tolkien

  ›

  By the time Peter Jackson invited her onto the writing team, Boyens had already read The Lord of the Rings seven times. She had been a fan of J. R. R. Tolkien's writing since childhood, long before adapting it became her job. Alongside Jackson and Fran Walsh, she co-wrote the screenplays for the Lord of the Rings series and King Kong. The same trio also wrote The Lovely Bones and the three-part Hobbit films. That same writing partnership with Jackson and Walsh soon extended past the page, as Boyens took on production duties too.

• 4. Beyond The Screenplay

  ›

  King Kong marked the start of a run in which Boyens served as co-producer on every film Jackson made afterward. She produced District 9 as well. For a period, she served as director of the New Zealand Writers Guild. That widening resume soon crossed into her home life, where people close to her began turning up in the credits too.

• 5. A Family In The Frame

  ›

  Paul Gittins, an actor, is the father of two of Boyens' children, Phoebe and Calum Gittins. Her son Isaac Miller is the other. All of them have appeared on screen in productions their mother wrote. Phoebe Gittins played a Hobbit in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. She also appeared in The Lovely Bones. In The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, she turned up in the Prancing Pony scene. Calum Gittins played Haleth in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Isaac Miller appeared as a young Hobbit in a flashback of the Old Took's party. That scene is included in the extended edition of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. None of these on-screen cameos came before the recognition Boyens herself received for the scripts they appeared in.

• 6. Honors For Adaptation

  ›

  Boyens, Jackson and Walsh won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. That win came at the 76th Academy Awards in 2004. That same year, in the Queen's Birthday Honours, Boyens was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to film. Two years later, in 2006, the University of Auckland gave her a Distinguished Alumni Award. Her filmography lists further credits beyond the Hobbit trilogy. In 2018 she is credited on a film called Mortal Engines. In 2024 her filmography returns to Middle-earth with The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.