List of Famous people born in Bay of Plenty Region, New Zealand

Taika David Cohen, known professionally as Taika Waititi, is a New Zealand film and television director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and comedian. He is the recipient of an Academy Award as well as two further nominations. He has also received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. His feature films Boy (2010) and Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) have each been the top-grossing New Zealand film.

Kane Stuart Williamson is a New Zealand international cricketer who is currently the captain of the New Zealand national team in all formats. He is a right-handed batsman and an occasional off spin bowler. Williamson is consistently rated as one of the top-ranked Test and ODI batsmen in the world, according to the ICC Player Rankings. On 31 December 2020, he reached a Test batting rating of 890, surpassing Steve Smith and Virat Kohli as the number one ranked Test batsmen in the world. Williamson was the only New Zealander to be named in the ICC Test Team of the Decade (2011–2020). The late former New Zealand cricketer, Martin Crowe, noted that, "we're seeing the dawn of probably our greatest ever batsman" in Williamson.

Temuera Derek Morrison is a New Zealand actor who first gained recognition for his role as Dr. Hone Ropata on the New Zealand soap opera Shortland Street. He gained critical acclaim after starring as Jake "The Muss" Heke in the 1994 film Once Were Warriors and its 1999 sequel What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?

Steven Funaki Adams is a New Zealand professional basketball player for the New Orleans Pelicans of the National Basketball Association (NBA). After playing one season with his hometown team Wellington Saints in 2011, Adams moved to the United States in 2012 to play college basketball for Pittsburgh. In June 2013, he was selected by the Thunder with the 12th overall pick in the 2013 NBA draft.

Benji Marshall is a New Zealand professional rugby league footballer who plays at five-eighth or halfback for the South Sydney Rabbitohs in the NRL and for New Zealand at international level.

Clifford Vivian Devon Curtis is a New Zealand actor. His film credits include Once Were Warriors (1994), Three Kings (1999), Blow (2001), Training Day (2001), Whale Rider (2002), Sunshine (2007), Live Free or Die Hard (2007) and The Dark Horse (2014), for which he won the Best Performance by an Actor award at the 2014 Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Curtis had television series roles on NBC's Trauma and ABC's Body of Proof and Missing. From 2015 to 2017, Curtis portrayed Travis Manawa on the AMC horror drama series Fear the Walking Dead.

Alice Lynne "Lindy" Chamberlain-Creighton is a New Zealand-born woman who was wrongfully convicted in one of Australia's most publicised murder trials. Accused of killing her nine-week-old daughter, Azaria, while camping at Uluru in 1980, she maintained that she saw a dingo leave the tent where Azaria was sleeping. The prosecution case was circumstantial and depended on forensic evidence.

Dame Valerie Kasanita Adams is a New Zealand shot putter. She is a four-time World champion, four-time World Indoor champion, two-time Olympic, three-time Commonwealth Games champion and twice IAAF Continental Cup winner. She has a personal best throw of 21.24 metres outdoors and 20.54 m indoors. These marks are Oceanian, Commonwealth and New Zealand national records. She also holds the Oceanian junior record (18.93 m) and the Oceanian youth record (17.54 m), as well as the World Championships record, World Indoor Championships record and Commonwealth Games record.

Dylan Hartley is a New Zealand-born English former rugby union player who played as hooker for Northampton Saints. Hartley was the captain of England from January 2016 until the end of his international career in 2018. He is England's most capped hooker of all time, earning his first cap in 2008. Hartley captained England to the Grand Slam in 2016, the first time that England had done this since 2003, and to a 3–0 series win in the 2016 Cook Cup against Australia. He announced his retirement on 7 November 2019.

Lisa Carrington is a New Zealand flatwater canoeist. She won gold in the Women's K-1 200 metres at the 2012 Summer Olympics and 2016 Summer Olympics, as well as gold in the same event at the 2011 Canoe Sprint World Championships.