Life less ordinary

Chelsie Preston Crayford follows a big 2024 with a new comedy role and putting the finishing touches on her debut feature as a director and writer.

- BY SARAH CATHERALL

For many months, Chelsie Preston Crayford agonised over her first feature film. About three years ago, the 37-year-old actor considered discarding it altogether because she felt the writing wasn't working.

She had written and directed three short films, including Falling Up, in which she played a recently separated young mother (the baby played by her own daughter Olive), which won Best NZ Short Film at the 2018 NZ International Film Festival.

Her forthcoming debut as writer and director is also inspired by her family and growing up as the daughter of pioneering film and documentary-maker Dame Gaylene Preston.

Caterpillar, she says, is “about three generations of women living together, all at pivotal life stages when they’re bumping up against one another”. She’s worked on it for six years, much of it during the pandemic when acting work dropped off.

I first talked to the actress and film-maker before Christmas, when she had just finished the busiest year of her three-decade career. Tired but exhilarated, she wasn’t long back in Auckland after the five-week Caterpillar shoot in Wellington.

As she approached the editing stage, we squeezed in a Zoom interview when she was craving time with 9-year-old Olive, her fiancé, comedian Guy Montgomery, and friends.

At the start of 2024, she had promised herself a better work-life balance, frustrated that a career in the arts can be feast or famine. Those hopes were dashed. “I completely didn’t achieve that in any way, shape or form,” she groaned.

But Preston Crayford grew up fitting in with her mother’s working life, and she’s very mindful that “you never know if something’s your last job”. Her big question is this: “How do you sustain a career in this industry and still also manage to have down time?”