The incredibly talented Philippa Boyens is an award-winning screenwriter, and producer. She is best known for co-writing Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies, for which she won an Oscar, as well as for The Hobbit. In 2004 she was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to film.

Born and raised in New Zealand, Boyens studied English at the University of Auckland. She then worked in theatre as a playwright, teacher, producer, and editor. She then broke into the film industry when she was hired as a co-writer by Peter Jackson for his adaptions of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The third movie, The Return of the King, saw her and co-writers Jackson and Fran Walsh pick up the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2004. She has also written the scripts for Jackson’s King Kong, The Lovely Bones, and The Hobbit trilogy.

Boyens has worked as a co-producer on all of director Peter Jackson’s movies since 2005’s King Kong, as well as on 2009’s sci-fi mockumentary District 9.