Keisha Castle-Hughes (born March 24, 1990) is a New Zealand actress, best-known for her first role, as Paikea in Whale Rider. She became the youngest female ever nominated for the Academy Awards’ Oscar for Best Actress, for this role.

Keisha 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.

On January 27, 2004, Castle-Hughes became the youngest female ever nominated for the Academy Awards’ Oscar for Best Actress, for her portrayal of Paikea Apirana (Pai) in the independent film Whale Rider. Despite not having had any previous acting experience, the then 11-year-old actress went directly from her Auckland classroom to the set when the film began shooting in New Zealand in late 2001, and received widespread critical acclaim for her performance. She soon followed the role by appearing in Prince’s controversial music video for his song “Cinnamon Girl” and with a shoot in Vanity Fair magazine. In 2004, Castle-Hughes was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Castle-Hughes’ most recent film roles were as Queen Apailana in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and the Virgin Mary in The Nativity Story, released in 2006. New York Times critic A. O. Scott said that she “seems entirely unfazed by the demands of playing Mary. She has the poise and intelligence to play the character not as an icon of maternity, but rather as a headstrong, thoughtful adolescent transformed by an unimaginable responsibility.” She will next be seen as Sunni in Hey, Hey, It’s Esther Blueburger, which was filmed in late 2006.

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