Matthew Sunderland


Matthew "Matt" Sunderland is a New Zealand Actor, Writer and Director. He performed the lead role of David Gray in the feature film Out of the Blue, based on the events of the Aramoana Massacre. At the New Zealand Screen Awards in 2008 he won Best Actor Award for this role.
Sunderland also stars as Uncle Rory in Cannes Winner Daniel Borgmans debut Feature The Weight of Elephants Produced by Zentropa films and Severe Features.
Sunderland was also nominated for a Best Actor Award in the 2006 NZ Screen Awards for Natures Way, which screened In Competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006.
His other feature film roles include A Song of Good, Christmas, Stringer, Woodenhead Existence and The Devil's Rock as well as more than twenty short films.
Matthew made his directorial/screenwriting debut with the short film Tuffy which deals with estrangement between a father and son, in small town New Zealand.
Sunderland graduated from The New Zealand Drama School Toi Whakaari in 1997 and has concentrated on New Zealand film work with numerous theatre excursions also. He has appeared at the Silo Theatre, and the Herald Theatre in Auckland, and the Court Theatre in Christchurch .
In 2013 Matt played in the stage adaption of Kate Grenville ’s Booker Prize–shortlisted The Secret River with the Sydney Theatre Company, to 5 star reviews, which toured throughout Australia.
Sunderland appeared in the New Zealand soap opera Shortland Street as White Dragon, in a storyline concluding the 3 year Kieran Mitchell story arc.
In 2016, Sunderland played the role of a drunken man resisting alien abduction in the music video for Bergschrund by DJ Shadow & Nils Frahm.
Sunderland played the chemist, Joseph Pritchard in the 2020 miniseries The Luminaires.