Dame Frances Rosemary Walsh is a New Zealand screenwriter, film producer and lyricist. She has won BAFTA and Oscars for her music, film producing, and script writing. The partner of filmmaker Peter Jackson, Walsh has contributed to all of his films since 1989: as co-writer since Meet the Feebles, and as producer since .
Walsh got her screen break writing material for New Zealand producer Grahame McLean on 1983 television film A Woman of Good Character . Later she wrote scripts for his TV showWorzel Gummidge Down Under. Walsh met Peter Jackson in the mid-1980s during the final stages of production on his low-budget movie Bad Taste where aliens serve humans as fast food, Walsh has collaborated with Jackson on the scripts of all his subsequent films, after joining the writing quartet on his next film, the dark comedyMeet the Feebles. The couple then reteamed with writer Stephen Sinclair on the horror-comedy film that they had begun writing before Feebles, the zombie movieBraindead. Walsh and Jackson have not married. They explored new ground with the drama Heavenly Creatures. The film that was Walsh's idea was based on the friendship of the Parker-Hulme teenagers, who infamously later killed one of their mothers. The film earned the duo an Oscar nomination for the screenplay. Walsh gave birth to Billy in 1995 and Katie in 1996. They returned to a more familiar genre with Universal Studios horror-comedy The Frighteners, their first film funded by an American studio. They were in talks with Universal to remake King Kong until 1998's Godzilla and Mighty Joe Young were first announced, and Universal decided against the film. Universal feared it would be thrown aside by the two higher budget movies. Wanting to try his hand at fantasy, Jackson turned to Miramax to make a film based on the works of writer J.R.R. Tolkien. In 1998, New Line Cinema provided the necessary financial backing to make a three-part adaptation of Tolkien's classic The Lord of the Rings. Walsh, with Jackson and Philippa Boyens, is credited for writing the screenplays for The Lord of the Rings film trilogy . They shared many awards, including an Oscar for their adapted screenplay for . She also was one of the film's producers and co-composer of two songs for Return of the King, namely "Into the West" and "A Shadow Lies Between Us", earning her one more Oscar that night. Walsh, Jackson, and Boyens continued their screenplay work together for the 2005 remake of King Kong, which was given the greenlight by Universal after the Rings trilogy's success. The couple collaborated on the adaptation of the novel The Lovely Bones and on the three-film adaptation of The Hobbit. Walsh prefers to remain more private than Jackson or Boyens; she did not contribute an interview to the bonus features on The Lord of the Rings movie DVDs; however, she did feature on the director/writers' commentary. Her vocals were used as a significant part of the screech of the Nazgûl in the films.
