Baz Luhrmann

Mark Anthony "Baz" Luhrmann

17 September 1962

An Australian film director, screenwriter and producer. He was raised in Herons Creek, a tiny rural settlement in northern New South Wales where his father ran a petrol station and a movie theatre. He attended St Joseph's Hasting Regional School, Port Macquarie (1975–1978) and at St Paul's College, Manly, performing in the school's version of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1. Luhrmann officially changed his given name from Mark to Baz sometime around 1979. Luhrmann then first auditioned for the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 1980 but was not accepted. He successfully auditioned again two years later, starting the three-year acting course in 1983. He graduated from NIDA in 1985, alongside Sonia Todd, Catherine McClements and Justin Monjo.

Luhrmann has cited Italian grand opera as a major influence on his work and has also given a nod to other theatrical styles, such as Bollywood films, as having had an impact on his style. Luhrmann was a ballroom dancer as a child and his mother taught ballroom dancing which was an inspiration for Strictly Ballroom 

Luhrmann received Directors Guild of America and Golden Globe nominations for Best Director – Motion Picture for his work on Moulin Rouge!, but did not receive an Oscar nomination for directing even though the film itself was nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture. 

As director, actor, writer, producer

• A Country Practice (1981-1982)
• Winter of Our Dreams (1981)
• The Bedroom (1982)
• The Highest Honor (1982)
• Kids of the Cross (1983)
• Strictly Ballroom (1992)
• Romeo + Juliet (1996)
• Moulin Rouge! (2001)
• Australia (2008)
• The Great Gatsby (2013)

Quotations

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The ugly duckling is a misunderstood universal myth. It's not about turning into a blonde Barbie doll or becoming what you dream of being; it's about self-revelation, becoming who you are.

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If Paris is a city of lights, Sydney is the city of fireworks.

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I wouldn't take a directing job if I didn't think it was enriching life.

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I never see things I make in the same way that the audience does. You can never do that.

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Ultimately, you have to pursue your own path, not someone's idea of the right path. You need to stay on your path.

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I feel a kinship with anyone who feels that their road, their life or who they really are is not good enough. I really relate to that.

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One of the great things about Sydney is that it has a great acceptance of everyone and everything. It's an incredibly tolerant city, a city with a huge multicultural basis.

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If you wanted to show a mirror to people that says, 'You've been drunk on money,' they're not going to want to see it. But if you reflected that mirror on another time they'd be willing to. People will need an explanation of where we are and where we've been, and 'The Great Gatsby' can provide that explanation.

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All good, clean stories are melodrama; it's just the set of devices that determines how you show or hide it.

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I always have a point of view. It may not be right, but it's my own.

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I often think to myself, at the end of an interesting life it's maybe not such a bad thing to spend your last days with your friends sitting by the blue, blue ocean reliving the story of your life while sitting in the dangerous sun.

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When you're in theater or the circus or film - to me it's all one - affairs happen. People fall in love.

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You really think that on my films people tell me what to do? I don't think so. On my films I decide.

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A life lived in fear is a life half lived.

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My father made sure that I had lots of levels of education - from ballroom-dancing to painting, commando training, theatre and magic.

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When I was growing up you would see big American films that really mythologised their landscape, that really showed the vastness and the drama of their country.

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Everything I make starts very personally.

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Fitzgerald coined the phrase the 'Jazz Age,' and now we're living in the Hip-Hop Age.

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Fitzgerald was a modernist.

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I am always worried when someone says, 'This is perfect.'

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I mean the future has become old fashioned.

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I really believe musical form will go on. There's got to be a way of making musical form in cinema live again.

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I understand that anything actors are doing, good or bad, is motivated by fear.

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Some of the greatest relationship films of all time, the two stars have hated each other, but mostly you see that chemistry.

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There's a whole system in Hollywood where the director never speaks to the studio, but I like to engage them in a discussion. I listen.

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Historically, epics are set in Africa or Asia or the Wild West, but if you make an epic today it's hard to disassociate from the contemporary realities of those places.

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I do find walking is fundamental to my creative process.

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I don't have fights with actors. In absolute honesty, I've never fought with any actor ever.

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I feel funny about owning art. I don't really want to say: 'Wow, come and see my Monet - it's in a dark room at the bottom of my cellar.'

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I feel like a member of any group comprised of outsiders.

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I grew up around jazz. I love jazz.

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I think dance in any culture, in any form, is a true leveler.

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Look, I had a passion for comic books growing up.

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One of my great all-time loves in cinema, and I've seen it three times, is Bondarchuk's 'War and Peace.' Not a lot of people may have seen that film. It was made during the Soviet era.

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