CLIFF Curtis is making a good case for the notion that jet lag is all in the mind.

Perhaps because the actor and producer is used to a 7000-mile commute between his New Zealand home and the US he can surf time zones with more ease than most. Or maybe he has retained his physical peak from the days when he carried a piano in Jane Campion's drama, The Piano.

Whatever, attending the Glasgow Film Festival last month he looks as though he has just caught a bus in from the west end of the city.

"Just the way I like it," he says with a smile when I ask how he is doing burning the filmmaking candle at both ends.

The principal reason for Curtis's "up and at 'em" attitude this morning is The Dark Horse, a film he stars in and produces. A prize winner around the world, the James Napier Robertson directed drama takes Curtis from supporting player in film and television, where his list of credits includes Training Day, Three Kings, Live Free or Die Hard, Sunshine, to front and centre. It does so, moreover, by telling a true story from his beloved homeland, that of Genesis "Gen" Potini, a chess champion who battled bipolar disorder to improve the lives of others.

From his start in The Piano to roles in Once Were Warriors, Whale Rider and Boy, Curtis has set out to balance the Hollywood and New Zealand ends of his career. It's exciting to go to Hollywood, to put on an accent and a costume, he says, "but it's relatively light fare compared to the soulfulness of our storytelling back home. It is who I am, it's my heritage but also socially it's important for us to understand who we are through our storytelling."

Curtis was not familiar with the Genesis Potini story before he read the script, and he had his doubts that he was the best person for the role, not least because it would require him to gain a lot of weight very quickly.

"There was talk of prosthetics, many different ways to accomplish it, and I thought well, I'd heard about these method actors who put on lots of weight and it all sounds terribly unhealthy." But having met Napier Robertson and Potini's family, Curtis decided to go for it, putting on almost five stones in six months. He was also careful to do his research into bipolar disorder so that the on-screen representation of the condition was as accurate as possible.

Rotorua-born Curtis, 46, is not an actor who likes to leave things to chance. Unlike many a performer keen to attribute their success to sheer luck, the former builder is a fan of plans. "Artists do have a tendency to sit around in cafeterias and talk a lot and complain. The only way to do it is to actually just do it."

It was this attitude that led to him forming his own production company with his cousin Ainsley Gardiner to tell stories rooted in Maori culture. Among their domestic and international successes have been Eagle vs Shark and Boy. The same planning ahead attitude was to benefit him in Hollywood, too. After a couple of years of "running around in the background" he started to worry that he was wasting his time.

"I thought the only way I'm going to do decent work is if I work with exceptional movie directors, artistically and creatively. I was very very grateful for what I had experienced but I wasn't going to make a difference standing round in the background on action movies, as much as I enjoyed the genre.

He made a list that included David O'Russell, Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann and Darren Aronofsky.

"Within 12 months I'd worked with three of the people on it. Those filmmakers came along and they emboldened me, they gave me confidence that creatively, artistically, I had a contribution to make, there in Hollywood as an actor. I could survive, I could feed myself. It kept me on the road. That was now 20 years ago."

Today, Curtis is in demand as much on television as he is in films. In cinema he can be seen from April 17 in Last Knights, an action adventure in which he stars alongside Morgan Freeman and Clive Owen. In television, his latest gig is the zombie actioner Fear the Walking Dead, a Walking Dead spin-off. Home will continue to be New Zealand though, where he lives with his wife and three children.

The New Zealand film industry is thriving, says Curtis, largely thanks to government efforts, and a new generation of filmmakers coming along. Of greatest significance was the Peter Jackson effect. In making the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies at home, Jackson boosted the film industry in New Zealand the way JK Rowling did the British film industry with Harry Potter.

Curtis is now keen to move into co-productions, including ones with Scottish filmmakers. His former agent was a Scot, and it was an invitation to The Last King of Scotland premiere from Glasgow-born producer Andrew Macdonald that led to Curtis meeting his wife. "So thank you Scotland."

If there's a way to repay the favour by working here, one can be certain Curtis, the man with a plan, will take it.

The Dark Horse opens in cinemas on April 3