Kevin Tod Smith is best known as Ares, the Greek God of War in the television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess.
Kevin was born in Auckland in 1963 and grew up in Timaru from age eleven. He started his theatrical career there in the Timaru Boys’ High School drama club, but had a wide-range of interests, including painting and music.
After enrolling in Canterbury University, Kevin continued to play in bands as well as seriously playing sports.
It was after Kevin suffered a concussion playing university rugby that his wife Suzanne signed him up for an audition in the touring company of the Elvis Presley tribute show, Are You Lonesome Tonight. He got the role.
Soon Kevin was on his way as an actor, not only in Christchurch, where he cofounded the theatresports group, Scared Scriptless but also on television, as the rogue returning character Damian Vermeer on NZ’s primetime soap opera, Gloss.
Future credits included Desperate Remedies and Marlin Bay, for which Kevin received the New Zealand Film and Television Best Supporting Actor award in 1995. It was in the same year that he began appearing in Hercules, to be followed by Xena: Warrior Princess.
Kevin’s life was cut short early in 2002 following an accident while filming a martial arts scene in China.
MORE ABOUT KEVIN FROM PUREWA’S TOUR APP
A TRIBUTE FROM ACTOR MICHAEL HURST
Kevin Todd SMITH
Died 2002
Block B, Row 02, Plot 30E
