Sir Peter Robert Jackson (born 31 October 1961) is a New Zealand filmmaker. He is best known as the director, screen-writer, and producer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003) and the Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014), both of which are adapted from the novels of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien. Jackson's other notable films include the comedy horror films Braindead (1992) and The Frighteners (1996), the drama Heavenly Creatures (1994), the monster remake King Kong (2005), and the World War I documentary They Shall Not Grow Old (2018). Jackson also directed and produced the documentary mini-series The Beatles: Get Back (2021). Jackson's films have grossed over $6.5 billion worldwide, making him the fifth-highest-grossing film director of all time.
Jackson began his career in the 1980s with comedy horror films like Bad Taste (1987) and Meet the Feebles (1989), followed in the 1990s with Braindead (1992) and The Frighteners (1996). He shared a nomination for Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay with his collaborator Fran Walsh for Heavenly Creatures, which brought him to mainstream prominence in the film industry. For The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Jackson won three Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. His other accolades include three BAFTAs, a Golden Globe, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and four Saturn Awards among others.
Jackson established WingNut Films as his production company in 1987. In 1993, he co-founded the Wellington-based companies Weta Workshop (now Wētā Workshop), to handle special and physical effects, and Weta Digital (now Wētā FX), to focus on digital visual effects. In 2002, Jackson was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. He was later knighted as a Knight Companion of the order by the Governor-General of New Zealand, Sir Anand Satyanand, at a ceremony in Wellington in April 2010. Jackson received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in December 2014, and in May 2026, he was awarded the Honorary Palme d'Or at the 79th Cannes Film Festival in recognition of his lifetime contribution to cinema. He is one of the wealthiest New Zealanders, with an estimated net worth of $1.9 billion in 2026.
Jackson was born on 31 October 1961 in Wellington
and was raised in its far northern suburb of Pukerua Bay. His parents – Joan (née Ruck), a factory worker and housewife, and William "Bill" Jackson, a wages clerk – were immigrants from England.
As a child, Jackson was a keen film fan, growing up on Ray Harryhausen films, as well as finding inspiration in the television series Thunderbirds and Monty Python's Flying Circus. After a family friend gave the Jacksons a Super 8 cine-camera with Peter in mind, he began making short films with his friends. Jackson has long cited King Kong as his favourite film, and around the age of nine he attempted to remake it using his own stop-motion models. Also, as a child Jackson made a World War II epic called The Dwarf Patrol seen on the Bad Taste bonus disc, which featured his first special effect of poking pinholes in the film for gun shots, and a James Bond spoof named Coldfinger. Most notable though was a 20-minute short called The Valley, which won him a special prize because of the shots he used.
Jackson attended Kāpiti College, where he expressed no interest in sports. His classmates also remember him wearing a duffel coat with "an obsession verging on religious". He had no formal training in film-making, but learned about editing, visual effects and make-up largely through his own trial and error. As a young adult, Jackson discovered the work of author J. R. R. Tolkien after watching The Lord of the Rings (1978), an animated film by Ralph Bakshi that was a part-adaptation of Tolkien's fantasy trilogy. When he was 16 years old, Jackson left school and began working full-time as a photo-engraver for a Wellington newspaper, The Evening Post. For the seven years he worked there, Jackson lived at home with his parents so he could save as much money as possible to spend on film equipment. After two years of work Jackson bought a 16 mm camera, and began shooting a film that later became Bad Taste.
Jackson has long cited several films as influences. It is well known that Jackson has a passion for King Kong, often citing it as his favourite film and as the film that inspired him early in his life. Jackson recalls attempting to remake King Kong when he was nine. At the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, while being interviewed alongside Avatar and Titanic director James Cameron, Jackson said certain films gave him a "kick". He mentioned Martin Scorsese's crime films Goodfellas and Casino, remarking on "something about those particular movies and the way Martin Scorsese just fearlessly rockets his camera around and has shot those films that I can watch those movies and feel inspired." Jackson said the 1970 film Waterloo inspired him in his youth. Other influences include George A. Romero, Steven Spielberg, Sam Raimi and the special effects by Ray Harryhausen.
Jackson's first feature was Bad Taste, a haphazard fashion splatter comedy which took years to make. It included many of Jackson's friends acting and working on it for free. Shooting was normally done on weekends since Jackson was then working full-time. Bad Taste is about aliens that come to earth with the intention of turning humans into food. Jackson had two acting roles including a famous scene in which he fights himself on top of a cliff. The film was finally completed thanks to a late injection of finance from the New Zealand Film Commission, after Jim Booth, the body's executive director, became convinced of Jackson's talent (Booth later left the commission to become Jackson's producer). Bad Taste debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1987.
Around this time, Jackson began working on writing a number of film scripts, in varied collaborative groupings with playwright Stephen Sinclair, writer Fran Walsh and writer/actor Danny Mulheron. Walsh would later become his life partner. Some of the scripts from this period, including a sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street, have never been made into movies; the proposed zombie film Braindead underwent extensive rewrites.
Jackson's next film to see release was Meet the Feebles (1989), co-written with Sinclair, Walsh and Mulheron. Begun on a very low budget, Meet the Feebles went weeks over schedule. Jackson stated of his second feature-length film, "It's got a quality of humour that alienates a lot of people. It's very black, very satirical, very savage."
Heavenly Creatures and Forgotten Silver
Released in 1994 after Jackson won a race to bring the story to the screen, Heavenly Creatures marked a major change for Jackson in terms of both style and tone. The real-life 1950s Parker–Hulme murder case, in which two teenage girls murdered one of their mothers, inspired the film. It was Fran Walsh that persuaded him that these events had the makings of a movie; Jackson has been quoted saying that the film "only got made" because of her enthusiasm for the subject matter. The film's fame coincided with the New Zealand media tracking down the real-life Juliet Hulme, who wrote books under the name Anne Perry. Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet played Parker and Hulme, respectively. Heavenly Creatures was critically acclaimed and was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards and made top ten of the year lists in Time, The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The New Zealand Herald.
The following year, in collaboration with Wellington film-maker Costa Botes, Jackson co-directed the mockumentary Forgotten Silver (1995). This ambitious made-for-television piece told the story of a fictitious New Zealand film pioneer, Colin McKenzie, who had supposedly invented colour film and 'talkies', and attempted an epic film of Salome before being forgotten by the world. Though the programme played in a slot normally reserved for drama, no other warning was given that it was fictionalised and many viewers were outraged at discovering Colin McKenzie had never existed. The number of people who believed the increasingly improbable story provides testimony to Jackson and Botes' skill at playing on New Zealand's national myth of a nation of innovators and forgotten trail-blazers.