FILM DIRECTORS from Australia

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Australian Film Directors of all time. This list of famous Australian Film Directors is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Australian Film Directors.

1. Peter Weir (1944 - )

With an HPI of 61.25, Peter Weir is the most famous Australian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 41 different languages on wikipedia.

Peter Lindsay Weir ( WEER; born 21 August 1944) is an Australian retired film director. He is known for directing films crossing various genres over forty years with films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Gallipoli (1981), The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), Witness (1985), Dead Poets Society (1989), Fearless (1993), The Truman Show (1998), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), and The Way Back (2010). He has received six Academy Award nominations, ultimately being awarded the Academy Honorary Award in 2022 for his lifetime achievement career.Early in his career as a director, Weir was a leading figure in the Australian New Wave cinema movement (1970–1990). Weir made his feature film debut with Homesdale and continued with the mystery drama Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), the supernatural thriller The Last Wave (1977) and the historical drama Gallipoli (1981). Weir gained tremendous success with the multinational production The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). After the success of The Year of Living Dangerously, Weir directed a diverse group of American and international films covering most genres–many of them major box office hits–including Academy Award-nominated films such as the thriller Witness (1985), the drama Dead Poets Society (1989), the romantic comedy Green Card (1990), the social science fiction comedy-drama The Truman Show (1998) and the epic historical drama Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). His final feature before his retirement was the well-received The Way Back (2010).

2. George Miller (1945 - )

With an HPI of 56.22, George Miller is the 2nd most famous Australian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 40 different languages.

George Miller (born 3 March 1945) is an Australian filmmaker, best known for his Mad Max franchise, whose second installment, Mad Max 2, and fourth, Fury Road, have been hailed two of the greatest action films of all time, Fury Road winning six Academy Awards. Miller is very diverse in genre and style as he also directed the biographical medical drama Lorenzo's Oil, the dark fantasy The Witches of Eastwick, and the Academy Award-winning animated film Happy Feet, produced the family-friendly fantasy adventure Babe and directed the sequel Babe: Pig in the City. Miller is a co-founder of the production houses Kennedy Miller Mitchell, formerly known as Kennedy Miller, and Dr. D Studios. His younger brother Bill Miller and Doug Mitchell have been producers on almost all the films in Miller's later career, since the death of his original producing partner Byron Kennedy. In 2006, Miller won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for Happy Feet (2006). He has been nominated for five other Academy Awards: Best Original Screenplay in 1992 for Lorenzo's Oil, Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay in 1995 for Babe, and Best Picture and Best Director for Fury Road in 2015.

3. Christopher Doyle (1952 - )

With an HPI of 51.68, Christopher Doyle is the 3rd most famous Australian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 26 different languages.

Christopher Doyle, also known as Dù Kěfēng (Mandarin) or Dou Ho-Fung (Cantonese) (traditional Chinese: 杜可風; simplified Chinese: 杜可风) (born 2 May 1952) is an Australian-Hong Kong cinematographer. He has worked on over fifty Chinese-language films, being best known for his collaborations with Wong Kar-wai in Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046. Doyle is also known for other films such as Temptress Moon, Hero, Dumplings, and Psycho. He has won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival, as well as the AFI Award for cinematography, the Golden Horse award (four times), and the Hong Kong Film Award (six times).

4. Roger Donaldson (1945 - )

With an HPI of 51.61, Roger Donaldson is the 4th most famous Australian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.

Roger Lindsey Donaldson (born 15 November 1945) is an Australian and New Zealand film director, screenwriter, and producer. His 1977 debut film, Sleeping Dogs, is considered landmark work of New Zealand cinema, as one of the country’s first films to attract large-scale critical and commercial success. He has subsequently directed 17 feature films, working in Hollywood and the United Kingdom, as well as his native country. Donaldson’s best-known films include the historical drama The Bounty (1984), the neo-noir No Way Out (1987), the romantic comedy Cocktail, the Cuban Missile Crisis docudrama Thirteen Days (2000), the science-fiction horror film Species (1995), the disaster film Dante's Peak (1997), the Burt Munro biopic The World's Fastest Indian (2005), and the historical thriller The Bank Job (2008). Donaldson has worked twice each with actors Kevin Costner, Pierce Brosnan, Anthony Hopkins and Michael Madsen. He is a recipient of three New Zealand Film and Television Awards. He is also an AACTA Award and Palme d’Or nominee. At the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours, Donaldson was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to film.

5. Bruce Beresford (1940 - )

With an HPI of 50.28, Bruce Beresford is the 5th most famous Australian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 31 different languages.

Bruce Beresford (; born 16 August 1940) is an Australian film director and screenwriter. He has made more than 30 feature films over a 50-year career, both locally and internationally in the United States. Beresford's films include Breaker Morant (1980), Tender Mercies (1983), Crimes of the Heart (1986) and Driving Miss Daisy (1989), which won four Academy Awards including Best Picture.

6. Baz Luhrmann (1962 - )

With an HPI of 50.15, Baz Luhrmann is the 6th most famous Australian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 40 different languages.

Mark Anthony "Baz" Luhrmann (born 17 September 1962) is an Australian film director, producer, writer, and actor. With projects spanning film, television, opera, theatre, music, and recording industries, he is regarded by some as a contemporary example of an auteur for his style and deep involvement in the writing, directing, design, and musical components of all his work. He is the most commercially successful Australian director, with four of his films in the top ten highest worldwide grossing Australian films of all time. On the screen he is best known for his "Red Curtain Trilogy", consisting of his romantic comedy film Strictly Ballroom (1992) and the romantic tragedies William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Moulin Rouge! (2001). Following the trilogy, projects included Australia (2008), The Great Gatsby (2013), Elvis (2022), and his television period drama The Get Down (2016) for Netflix. Additional projects include stage productions of Giacomo Puccini's La bohème for both Opera Australia and Broadway, and Strictly Ballroom the Musical (2014). Luhrmann is known for his Grammy-nominated soundtracks for Moulin Rouge! and The Great Gatsby, as well as his record label House of Iona, a co-venture with RCA Records. Serving as producer on all of his musical soundtracks, he also holds writing credits on many of the individual tracks. His album Something for Everybody features music from many of his films and also includes his hit "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)".

7. Phillip Noyce (1950 - )

With an HPI of 50.10, Phillip Noyce is the 7th most famous Australian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

Phillip Noyce (born April 29, 1950) is an Australian film and television director. Since 1977, he has directed over 19 feature films in various genres, including historical drama (Newsfront, Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Quiet American); thrillers (Dead Calm, Sliver, The Bone Collector); and action films (Blind Fury, The Saint, Salt). He has also directed the Jack Ryan adaptations Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994), as well as the 2014 adaptation of Lois Lowry's The Giver. He has worked at various times with such actors as Val Kilmer, Harrison Ford, Denzel Washington, Michael Caine, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Rutger Hauer and three films with Thora Birch over 25 years. He has also directed, written and executive-produced television programmes in both Australia and North America, including The Cowra Breakout, Vietnam, Revenge, Roots and Netflix's What/If. Noyce's work has won him several accolades, including AACTA Awards for Best Film, Best Director and a special Longford Lyell lifetime achievement award.

8. Russell Mulcahy (1953 - )

With an HPI of 48.83, Russell Mulcahy is the 8th most famous Australian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 26 different languages.

Russell Mulcahy ( mul-KA-hee; born 23 June 1953) is an Australian director of film, television, and music videos. He began his career directing music videos for artists like Elton John and Duran Duran, before making his feature directorial debut with the horror film Razorback (1984). He achieved international prominence by directing the fantasy action film Highlander (1986), which spawned a multimedia franchise. Mulcahy’s subsequent work includes Highlander’s first sequel Highlander II: The Quickening (1991), the superhero film The Shadow, the action-horror film Resident Evil: Extinction (2007), and the Errol Flynn biopic In Like Flynn. He was also a director and executive producer of the television series Teen Wolf (2011-17), and directed the film’s 2023 feature film spin-off. Stylistically, Mulcahy’s work is recognisable by the use of fast cuts, tracking shots and use of glowing lights, neo-noir lighting, windblown drapery, and fans.

9. John Farrow (1904 - 1963)

With an HPI of 48.67, John Farrow is the 9th most famous Australian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 29 different languages.

John Villiers Farrow, KGCHS (10 February 1904 – 27 January 1963) was an Australian film director, producer, and screenwriter. Spending a considerable amount of his career in the United States, in 1942 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for Wake Island, and in 1957 he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Around the World in Eighty Days. He had seven children by his wife, actress Maureen O'Sullivan, including actress Mia Farrow.

10. John Pilger (1939 - 2023)

With an HPI of 46.24, John Pilger is the 10th most famous Australian Film Director.  His biography has been translated into 32 different languages.

John Richard Pilger (; 9 October 1939 – 30 December 2023) was an Australian journalist, writer, scholar and documentary filmmaker. From 1962, he was based mainly in Britain. He was also a visiting professor at Cornell University in New York. Pilger was a critic of American, Australian and British foreign policy, which he considered to be driven by an imperialist and colonialist agenda. He criticised his native country's treatment of Indigenous Australians. He first drew international attention for his reports on the Cambodian genocide. Pilger's career as a documentary film maker began with The Quiet Mutiny (1970), made during one of his visits to Vietnam, and continued with over 50 documentaries thereafter. Other works in this form include Year Zero (1979), about the aftermath of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, and Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy (1993). His many documentary films on indigenous Australians include The Secret Country (1985) and Utopia (2013). In the British print media, Pilger worked at the Daily Mirror from 1963 to 1986, and wrote a regular column for the New Statesman magazine from 1991 to 2014. Pilger won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award in 1967 and 1979. His documentaries have gained awards in Britain and abroad, including a BAFTA.