Keisha Castle-Hughes

Keisha Castle-Hughes is a New Zealand actress who went from her Auckland classroom to the set of Whale Rider (2002) with no acting experience, playing Paikea Apirana. She was born in Donnybrook, Western Australia, and grew up in Auckland. Critics praised her performance in the film, and in 2004 the Academy nominated her for Best Actress; at 13 she was the youngest nominee in that category, and the third Indigenous actress to be nominated for an Oscar. She went on to play the Virgin Mary in The Nativity Story (2006), Queen Apailana in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (2005), and Rosa in Red Dog (2011), and appeared in Vampire and Hey, Hey, It's Esther Blueburger. On television she played Obara Sand in Game of Thrones from 2015 to 2017, has played the FBI analyst Hana Gibson on CBS since 2020, and voiced Dr. Emerie Karr in Star Wars: The Bad Batch.