Search the name “Matewa Kiritapu” online and you will find a lot of confident-sounding biography pages — and a surprising number of them bury the most important fact in the pile. So let’s get it straight at the start: Matewa Kiritapu is not Taika Waititi’s ex-wife. She is his daughter — the younger of the two girls the Oscar-winning filmmaker had with his former wife, producer Chelsea Winstanley.
Born in New Zealand in 2015, Matewa has grown up at the intersection of two filmmaking worlds. Her father is the director behind Thor: Ragnarok, Jojo Rabbit, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople; her mother is an award-winning producer whose work champions Māori storytelling. At just seven years old, Matewa made her acting debut in a Marvel blockbuster directed by her own father, appearing alongside her big sister as one of the Asgardian kids in Thor: Love and Thunder.
But there is much more to the story than a cameo. In this article, we lay out what is actually verifiable about Matewa Kiritapu: her birth and family, the role she played in one of Marvel’s biggest films, the surprising way she helped design the movie’s monsters, what her siblings’ lives look like, and how her parents have tried to give her a childhood that is as normal as possible. Along the way, we will flag the things the internet gets wrong about her — because with a private child of famous parents, the internet gets a lot wrong.
Quick Bio
| Full Name | Matewa Kiritapu |
| Known For | Daughter of Taika Waititi and Chelsea Winstanley; child actress (“Asgardian Kid” in Thor: Love and Thunder) |
| Date of Birth | Widely reported as August 11, 2015 (not officially confirmed by the family) |
| Age | 11 (as of October 2026) |
| Birthplace | Reported as Wellington, New Zealand; not officially confirmed |
| Nationality | New Zealander |
| Ethnicity | Māori |
| Parents | Taika Waititi (father) and Chelsea Winstanley (mother) |
| Siblings | Older sister Te Hinekāhu; older half-brother Maia Winstanley |
| Acting Credits | Thor: Love and Thunder (2022); reportedly one episode of Our Flag Means Death (2023) |
| Current Status | A child in school, living a largely private family life |
Who Is Matewa Kiritapu?
Matewa Kiritapu is the younger daughter of New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi and film producer Chelsea Winstanley. She was born in 2015, a few years after her parents married, and she spent her earliest years in New Zealand before the family’s life became increasingly centered on the international film industry.
The confusion about who she is tells you something about how celebrity biography sites work. Because her parents’ marriage and separation have been widely covered, some low-quality pages lump her name into articles about “Taika Waititi’s ex-wife” — a title that belongs to Chelsea Winstanley, her mother. Matewa herself has never been married to anyone; she is a child. Any page suggesting otherwise is simply wrong.
What makes Matewa more than a standard celebrity-kid footnote is that she has already appeared on screen. Her father cast both of his daughters in Thor: Love and Thunder, and the story of how the film’s creatures came to look the way they do runs straight through the Waititi household’s art table. She is, in a small but genuine way, already part of film history.
Early Life and Family Background
Matewa was born on August 11, 2015, according to the date repeated across celebrity biography sites. It is worth being honest here: the family has never issued an official birth announcement, so that date should be treated as widely reported rather than family-confirmed. What is certain is the year — she was born in 2015 in New Zealand, with some reports naming Wellington as the city.
She arrived into a family already steeped in film. Her father, Taika David Cohen — professionally Taika Waititi — had been building his directing career for years, and her mother, Chelsea Winstanley, was an established producer of short films and documentaries centered on Indigenous peoples. Matewa’s older sister, Te Hinekāhu, had been born in 2012, so Matewa grew up from day one with a playmate only three years her senior.
By the time Matewa was three, her parents’ marriage had ended. Taika Waititi and Chelsea Winstanley separated in 2018, with news of the split only emerging publicly in 2020. Both parents have continued to raise their daughters jointly, and Waititi has frequently shared photos of the girls visiting him on film sets during school breaks — a detail he has spoken about with visible pride.
Meet Her Parents: Taika Waititi and Chelsea Winstanley
It is impossible to understand Matewa’s story without knowing who her parents are — and Chelsea Winstanley deserves more than the “ex-wife” label the tabloids give her. Winstanley is a New Zealand film producer, writer, and director whose work has focused on Indigenous storytelling. She produced Jojo Rabbit — which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture — and worked with Waititi on What We Do in the Shadows.
Her independent achievements are substantial. In 2017 she co-founded Matewa Media with Waititi’s cousin Tweedie Waititi, a company dedicated to translating Disney animated films into the Māori language — including Moana, The Lion King, and Frozen. She has collected multiple honors from Women in Film and Television New Zealand, and in 2022 she was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to Māori and the film industry.
Winstanley has also been candid about why she stepped out of her husband’s shadow. In 2018 she told the press she was “sick of women portrayed as living in the shadow of their partners” — a statement widely read as a window into why the marriage ended. Whatever the cause, she has built a career and public identity entirely her own.
Taika Waititi’s résumé needs less introduction: an Academy Award (Best Adapted Screenplay for Jojo Rabbit), a BAFTA, a Grammy, two of the highest-grossing New Zealand films of all time (Boy and Hunt for the Wilderpeople), and the director of Thor: Ragnarok and Thor: Love and Thunder. After his split from Winstanley, he began a relationship with British singer Rita Ora in 2021, and the couple married in a small private ceremony in August 2022.
Her Siblings: Te Hinekāhu and Maia
Matewa’s closest companion in life is her older sister, Te Hinekāhu — often shortened to “Te” — who was born in 2012. The two sisters share a tight bond and remarkably similar interests: both love movies, both enjoy cosplaying and dressing up as film characters, and both made their acting debuts together in Thor: Love and Thunder. Whenever school is on break, their father brings them along to his film sets, and the girls are frequently photographed side by side at industry events.
Taika has joked publicly about Te Hinekāhu’s name, once telling friends it meant “Tupac’s Resurrection” or was named after his beloved Mazda RX7 — classic Waititi humor that the press happily repeated. In reality, the name is a Māori name, reflecting the family’s deep connection to Māori heritage, which runs through both parents’ work.
Matewa also has an older half-brother, Maia Winstanley, from her mother’s earlier life. Winstanley had Maia when she was young — around 20, according to reports — and raised him as a single mother before she met Waititi. Maia has his own connection to film: he appeared in Waititi’s 2010 film Boy. He is now an adult, and by all accounts the blended family is close.
Acting Debut in Thor: Love and Thunder
In 2022, at around seven years old, Matewa stepped in front of a movie camera for the first time. Thor: Love and Thunder, directed and co-written by her father, cast a swarm of children as the kidnapped kids of New Asgard — and among them were Matewa and her sister Te, credited as Asgardian Kids. It was not the only family affair in the film: Chris Hemsworth’s own children also appeared.
Their roles were small, but the experience was clearly a big deal for the girls. Waititi has said that his daughters are huge Marvel fans and were thrilled to meet the cast and crew. And in a film full of Hollywood stars — Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson — the Waititi sisters got to share the screen with genuine A-listers before they had even finished primary school.
Some reports also credit Matewa with an appearance in a 2023 episode of Our Flag Means Death, the pirate comedy series her father executive-produced and occasionally directed. That credit appears on only a handful of sites, so it should be treated as reported rather than confirmed — but it fits the pattern of a child whose father keeps bringing the family along for the ride.
The Monsters She Helped Inspire
Here is the detail that separates Matewa from the average celebrity kid with a cameo: she and her sister genuinely influenced the look of Thor: Love and Thunder. Waititi has explained in interviews that the film’s monsters were inspired by drawings made by children — including his own daughters. The kids produced wildly colorful, strange creature designs, and the film’s design team toned them down and built the movie’s monsters from them.
“In some of the kids’ drawings, they were super colorful,” Waititi said, explaining why the finished monsters look so odd and striking — “that’s why the monsters look like they were created by kids.” It is a lovely detail: two of the film’s most memorable visual elements began as a child’s crayon drawing on the Waititi kitchen table.
This is the kind of anecdote that the fact-sheet biography sites almost never include, because it requires going beyond the birth-date-and-net-worth template. But it is the most human thing in Matewa’s public story so far — a reminder that behind the credits, she was just a kid drawing monsters with her sister.
Growing Up in a Filmmaking Family
What does childhood look like for the daughter of two filmmakers? By all accounts, it involves a lot of movie sets. Both parents have described — and Waititi’s social media has shown — the girls accompanying him to locations during school holidays, watching films being made from the inside. For most children, “bring your kid to work day” means an office; for Matewa, it has meant Marvel sets.
The family’s Māori heritage is another through-line. Both parents have made Indigenous storytelling central to their careers — from Chelsea’s Māori-language Disney dubs to Waititi’s films rooted in New Zealand culture — and the girls’ names reflect that identity. Matewa and Te Hinekāhu are growing up with a strong sense of where they come from, even as their father’s career has pulled the family toward Los Angeles and London.
The divorce, when Matewa was three, could easily have been the defining disruption of her childhood. By every available account, it wasn’t. Both parents appear committed to co-parenting, the girls split their time happily, and neither parent has dragged the children into public acrimony. For a Hollywood split, that is the best-case outcome — and the one the kids actually live with.
Life Away From the Spotlight
For all the red-carpet-adjacent moments, Matewa Kiritapu’s day-to-day life is deliberately ordinary. She is in school — the name of the school has never been made public, and it should stay that way — and her parents have kept her out of the press beyond the occasional proud-dad social media post. She has no public social media presence of her own, gives no interviews, and is not being groomed as a child star.
That restraint is worth noting, because the celebrity-kid machine usually works the other way. Plenty of famous parents monetize their children’s cuteness; the Waititi-Winstanley approach has been the opposite. The Thor cameo was a family experience, not a career launch, and there is no evidence of agents, auditions, or a master plan. For more profiles of the families behind famous names, browse our Celebrity section.
Whether Matewa eventually follows her parents into film — as her sister seems inclined to do — or chooses something entirely different is, for now, entirely her business. She is eleven years old. The most interesting chapters of her story have not been written yet.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Matewa Kiritapu?
Matewa Kiritapu is the younger daughter of New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi and film producer Chelsea Winstanley. She was born in 2015 and made her acting debut as an Asgardian Kid in her father’s 2022 film Thor: Love and Thunder.
Is Matewa Kiritapu Taika Waititi’s ex-wife?
No — this is a common mix-up caused by sloppy biography sites. Matewa Kiritapu is Taika Waititi’s daughter. His ex-wife is Chelsea Winstanley, Matewa’s mother; the couple separated in 2018 after about seven years of marriage.
How old is Matewa Kiritapu?
She was born in 2015 — widely reported as August 11, 2015 — which makes her 11 years old as of 2026. The exact birth date has never been officially confirmed by the family.
Was Matewa Kiritapu in Thor: Love and Thunder?
Yes. She played one of the Asgardian Kids in Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), alongside her older sister Te Hinekāhu. The film was directed and co-written by their father. She and her sister also inspired some of the film’s monster designs with their childhood drawings.
Who is Matewa Kiritapu’s mother?
Her mother is Chelsea Winstanley, a New Zealand film producer, writer, and director known for Jojo Rabbit and What We Do in the Shadows. She co-founded Matewa Media, which produces Māori-language versions of Disney films, and was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2022.
Does Matewa Kiritapu have siblings?
Yes — an older sister, Te Hinekāhu (born 2012), who also appeared in Thor: Love and Thunder, and an older half-brother, Maia Winstanley, from her mother’s earlier relationship.
Bottom Line
Matewa Kiritapu’s story is still in its first chapter, and that is exactly how it should be. She is a child who happened to be born to two of New Zealand’s most creative filmmakers, who got to be in a Marvel movie because her dad was directing it, and whose crayon drawings helped shape the film’s monsters. None of that was her choice — but the warmth with which both parents have protected her childhood suggests she will get to make her own choices when the time comes.
The internet will keep getting her story wrong in small ways: the wrong relationship label, the overconfident birth date, the invented net worth. The truth is simpler and better. Matewa Kiritapu is Taika Waititi’s daughter — not his ex-wife, not a headline, just a kid growing up in a family that makes movies. Everything else is still to come.
