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Rene Naufahu has come a long way since becoming a household name playing core cast character Sam ‘the Ambulance Man’ Aleni back in the early 1990’s when Shortland Street first started.

Acting was something he fell in to. At the time Rene was a rugby player of immense potential (having represented NZ at Under 17 level), dabbling in the fashion world (Karen Walker selected him to model for her first poster campaign) and he also DJ’d at select nightclubs (all this while studying an arts degree at Auckland University).

Rene struggled with the burdens and expectations of fame for a variety of reasons – lack of experience, difficulty with learning how to act and for the first time, having a reasonable amount of money in his pocket. At one stage Rene was performing in a mega-successful musical ‘The New Rocky Horror Picture Show’, whilst acting in Shortland Street, presenting on ‘Mountain Dew on the Edge’ and running an elite VIP nightclub ‘The Sanctuary’, at the same time.

Born in 1970 to a Tongan father and Samoan/German/Irish mother, Rene was the eldest of five siblings. Raised in the heart of Otara, South Auckland Rene attended Auckland Grammar School. Even though he was successful at school, somehow Rene always felt like an outsider.

Rene left Shortland Street and New Zealand at the height of his popularity. He headed across to Australia and was immediately successful gaining work in such shows as Water Rats, All Saints, Sea Change and Tales of the South Seas as well as films such as Rubicon and The Matrix:Reloaded.

Rene is a critically acclaimed TV writer (The Markets), award winning actor (Erasmus in No.2) and is preparing to direct his debut feature film (The Last Saint). He is the creator of The Hive Workshops Ltd, Australasia’s only workshop lab for writer/directors preparing to shoot feature films. He was the first Polynesian to study screen writing at the prestigious Binger Filmlab in Amsterdam and the first Kiwi actor to be invited to both the London and Berlin film festivals in the same year.