The Most Famous
FILM DIRECTORS from Australia
This page contains a list of the greatest Australian Film Directors. The pantheon dataset contains 2,041 Film Directors, 22 of which were born in Australia. This makes Australia the birth place of the 17th most number of Film Directors behind Sweden, and China.
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 (b. 1944)
With an HPI of 63.62, Peter Weir is the most famous Australian Film Director. His biography has been translated into 45 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. In 2022 he was awarded the Academy Honorary Award for his lifetime achievement career. In 2024, he received an honorary life-time achievement award at the Venice Film Festival (Golden Lion). 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 (b. 1945)
With an HPI of 57.81, George Miller is the 2nd most famous Australian Film Director. His biography has been translated into 42 different languages.
George Miller (born 3 March 1945) is an Australian filmmaker. Over the course of four decades he has received critical and popular success creating the Mad Max franchise starting in 1979 with two of the films having been hailed as two of the greatest action films of all time. He has also earned numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and a Golden Globe Award. Miller rose to prominence directing the dystopian action-adventure films Mad Max (1979), Mad Max 2 (1981) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). He then directed the dark fantasy comedy The Witches of Eastwick (1987), and the biographical medical drama Lorenzo's Oil (1992), which he also co-wrote earning a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He produced and co-wrote the family film Babe (1995) earning a Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay nomination and later directed the sequel Babe: Pig in the City (1998). In 1995, he also produced the confronting cinema verité documentary Video Fool for Love, which dealt with film editor Robert Gibson's personal life as captured in hundreds of hours of camcorder footage. He won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for Happy Feet (2006) and directed its sequel Happy Feet Two (2011). He returned to Mad Max directing the critically acclaimed sequel Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), which went on to win six Academy Awards with Miller receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director. He then directed the prequel film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024). Trained in medicine at the University of New South Wales, Miller worked as a physician for several years before entering the film industry full-time. He is a co-founder of the production houses Kennedy Miller Mitchell, formerly known as Kennedy Miller, and Dr. D Studios. Since the death of his producing partner Byron Kennedy, his younger brother Bill Miller and Doug Mitchell have produced his later films.
3. Roger Donaldson (b. 1945)
With an HPI of 53.15, Roger Donaldson is the 3rd most famous Australian Film Director. His biography has been translated into 22 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 (1988), 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.
4. Christopher Doyle (b. 1952)
With an HPI of 52.75, Christopher Doyle is the 4th most famous Australian Film Director. His biography has been translated into 27 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).
5. John Pilger (1939 - 2023)
With an HPI of 52.13, John Pilger is the 5th most famous Australian Film Director. His biography has been translated into 37 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.
6. Baz Luhrmann (b. 1962)
With an HPI of 52.03, Baz Luhrmann is the 6th most famous Australian Film Director. His biography has been translated into 42 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. Bruce Beresford (b. 1940)
With an HPI of 51.84, Bruce Beresford is the 7th most famous Australian Film Director. His biography has been translated into 30 different languages.
Bruce Beresford (; born 16 August 1940) is an Australian film director, opera director, screenwriter, and producer. He began his career during the Australian New Wave, and has made more than 30 feature films over a 50-year career, both locally and internationally in the United States. He is a two-time Academy Award nominee, and a four-time AACTA/AFI Awards winner out of 10 total nominations Beresford's films include Breaker Morant (1980), Tender Mercies (1983), Crimes of the Heart (1986), Driving Miss Daisy (1989) - which won four Oscars including Best Picture, Black Robe (1991), Silent Fall (1994), Mao's Last Dancer (2009), and Ladies in Black (2018). He was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay for Breaker Morant, and Best Director for Tender Mercies. He won AACTA/AFI Awards - Best Direction (2) for Don's Party (1976) and Breaker Morant, and Best Screenplay (2) for Breaker Morant and The Fringe Dwellers (1986). In addition, four of Beresford's films have been nominated for the Palme d'Or, and four have been nominated for the Golden Bear. He has also been nominated for two BAFTA Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a Directors Guild of America Award, and won a Genie Award.
8. John Farrow (1904 - 1963)
With an HPI of 51.14, John Farrow is the 8th most famous Australian Film Director. His biography has been translated into 30 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.
9. Russell Mulcahy (b. 1953)
With an HPI of 50.48, Russell Mulcahy is the 9th 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.
10. Phillip Noyce (b. 1950)
With an HPI of 50.01, Phillip Noyce is the 10th most famous Australian Film Director. His biography has been translated into 25 different languages.
Phillip Roger Noyce (born 29 April 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.
People
Pantheon has 24 people classified as Australian film directors born between 1904 and 1977. Of these 24, 22 (91.67%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Australian film directors include Peter Weir, George Miller, and Roger Donaldson. The most famous deceased Australian film directors include John Pilger, and John Farrow. As of April 2024, 2 new Australian film directors have been added to Pantheon including Stephan Elliott, and Stuart Beattie.
Living Australian Film Directors
Go to all Rankings
Peter Weir
1944 - Present
HPI: 63.62
George Miller
1945 - Present
HPI: 57.81
Roger Donaldson
1945 - Present
HPI: 53.15
Christopher Doyle
1952 - Present
HPI: 52.75
Baz Luhrmann
1962 - Present
HPI: 52.03
Bruce Beresford
1940 - Present
HPI: 51.84
Russell Mulcahy
1953 - Present
HPI: 50.48
Phillip Noyce
1950 - Present
HPI: 50.01
John Seale
1942 - Present
HPI: 47.84
Fred Schepisi
1939 - Present
HPI: 47.19
Leigh Whannell
1977 - Present
HPI: 45.58
Gillian Armstrong
1950 - Present
HPI: 42.25
