Baz Luhrmann

Early and personal life

Mark Anthony Luhrmann was born in Sydney, New South Wales, on 17 September 1962. His mother, Barbara Carmel (née Brennan), was a ballroom dance teacher and dress shop owner, and his father, Leonard Luhrmann, ran a petrol station and a cinema. He was raised in Herons Creek, a tiny rural settlement in mid-northern New South Wales. He attended St Joseph's Hastings Regional School, Port Macquarie (1975–1978); St Paul's Catholic College, performing in the school's version of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1; and Narrabeen Sports High School, where he met his future collaborator Craig Pearce.

Luhrmann received the nickname "Baz" at school, given to him because of his hairstyle, the name coming from the puppet character Basil Brush. While still in high school, Luhrmann changed his name by deed poll to Bazmark, joining his nickname and birth name together. In 1980 Luhrmann graduated from high school, and in the same year was cast opposite Judy Davis in the Australian film Winter of Our Dreams. In 1982, using the money he had earned from film and television work, he co-founded, with Nell Schofield, Gabrielle Mason, and Julia Little, their own theatre company, The Bond Theatre Company. The four had recently been turned down by NIDA. In March the company performed American Days at the pavilion at Sydney's Bondi Beach. At the same time, he conceived and appeared in a controversial television documentary, Kids of the Cross, where Luhrmann, embedded as a character, lived with a group of street kids. In 1983 he enrolled in an acting course at the National Institute of Dramatic Art. He graduated in 1985 alongside Sonia Todd, Catherine McClements and Justin Monjo.

On 26 January 1997 he married Catherine Martin, a production designer, costume designer and film producer; the couple have two children. When asked in interviews about his sexuality, Luhrmann has said that he sees all sexual possibilities.

Luhrmann supports the Melbourne Demons in the Australian Football League.

Career

Film

After theatrical successes, including the short play Strictly Ballroom which premiered at the Wharf Theatre, Luhrmann moved into film. He made his directorial debut with the 1992 film version of Strictly Ballroom.

Luhrmann's modern film interpretation Romeo + Juliet (1996), based on the William Shakespeare play and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, defeated Titanic at the BAFTAs for best direction, music and screenplay. The film was celebrated at the Berlin Film Festival, where it was recognised with the Golden Bear award for direction and Silver Bear for DiCaprio's performance. Luhrmann also produced both volumes of the soundtrack album, which went triple-platinum.

Luhrmann's Academy Award-winning musical Moulin Rouge! (2001), set in the Montmartre quarter of Paris at the dawn of the 20th century, told the story of an English poet and writer, Christian (Ewan McGregor), who falls in love with the star of the Moulin Rouge, cabaret actress and courtesan, Satine (Nicole Kidman). The film was praised by its adherents, including the musical directors Robert Wise and Stanley Donen, as having re-invented the modern musical, blending decades of popular music in remixes and mash-ups. The film was named one of the AFI's top ten films of 2001 and in 2010 was chosen as the top film of the 2000s decade in a poll of 150,000 respondents in the United Kingdom. At the 59th Annual Golden Globes, Moulin Rouge! took home the awards for Best Motion Picture, Best Actress and Best Original Score. The film also gave birth to a successful soundtrack album, produced by Luhrmann, which sold more than seven million copies and went double-platinum, led by the Grammy-winning number one hit single "Lady Marmalade".

Luhrmann's 2008 historical epic Australia featured some of the country's most celebrated actors, including Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, and David Gulpilil. Starting just befor World War II, the film blended a nostalgic romance with major events from Australian history, including the Bombing of Darwin, and the true story of the Stolen Generations, wherein thousands of mixed-race Aboriginal children were stolen from their families by the state and forcibly integrated into white society. The movie's racial politics were controversial for their time, and notably, its production coincided with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's 2008 Apology to Australia's Indigenous peoples. Marcia Langton, a professor of Australian indigenous studies at the University of Melbourne, publicly supported the film, saying "Luhrmann depicts with satirical sharpness the racial caste system of that time... In his imagined cinema of the 1940s, the spatial and social shape of racism is reconstructed with such exact detail, I felt I had been transported back to my own childhood." While achieving modest box office success in the United States, the film was very successful in Europe, maintaining the #1 slot at the box office for many weeks in France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Scandinavian countries. It is the second-highest grossing Australian film of all time, next to Crocodile Dundee and ahead of Happy Feet.

Television

In 2016 Luhrmann collaborated with the playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis on the Netflix series The Get Down about the birth of hip hop in the 1970s. For the series, Luhrmann brought on Nas, Grandmaster Flash, Kurtis Blow and DJ Kool Herc as producers, to help to tell the story of the rise of hip hop, punk, and disco during shifting cultural and political transformation through his unique brand of magical realism. The series featured two parts, praised for its vibrant music, fresh cast and authenticity, due to the involvement of many of the era's key historical figures in central roles to the show's development. Part One got a score of 77% from the online review-aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, while Part Two holds a critic score of 86%.

Filmography

Director

Film

Television

Screen actor

Television

Film

Other ventures

Luhrmann, who started appearing on TV screen in 1981, appeared in Winter of Our Dreams, directed by John Duigan. By 1992, he had directed the music video "Love Is in the Air" by John Paul Young. The next year, Luhrmann staged his interpretation of A Midsummer Night's Dream by Benjamin Britten. In 1997 when the CD of Something for Everybody was released, it featured Luhrmann's films and operas. Following the success, he created and managed a company Bazmark along with his wife, Catherine Martin.

In 1997 as a music producer, Luhrmann was credited on "Everybody's Free", a spoken word song in Europe, Australia and the Americas. Luhrmann directed a 2004 commercial for Chanel N° 5 entitled N° 5 the Film. On Charlie Rose interview, he told Rose that the commercial was based on the 1953 film, Roman Holiday. The next year 2005, Luhrmann was appointed an Ambassador for the Australian Theatre for Young People, and in next three years, he was asked by the Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd to make adverts for the promotion of tourism in Australia. In 2009 during the 81st Academy Awards in February, Luhrmann put together a number dedicated to musicals which consisted of Hugh Jackman, Beyoncé, Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Dominic Cooper and Amanda Seyfried. In September of same year, he appeared as a guest judge on Dancing with the Stars.

He produced Christina Aguilera and Nile Rodgers' 2016 single "Telepathy", along with Elliott Wheeler.

Luhrmann and the painter Vincent Fantauzzo embarked on an art initiative which took them to India, where they created artworks on walls of hotels, in the streets of Rajasthan and on 17th-century forts in 2010. He also shot the campaign film The Secret Life of Flowers. Though mostly hands-off with the stage production of Moulin Rouge!, Luhrmann produced its Broadway cast recording in 2019.

Luhrmann led the jury at the 2023 Red Sea International Film Festival held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

In January 2025, Luhrmann collaborated with wife Catherine Martin and Jon Neidich of Golden Age Hospitality on Monsieur, a new bar in New York City's East Village with a gothic medieval aesthetic, inspired by the East Village nightlife in the late 1960s and early 70s.

Influence and legacy

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 influenced his style. Luhrmann was a ballroom dancer as a child and his mother taught ballroom dancing which was an inspiration for Strictly Ballroom. Luhrmann's favourite films are Star 80, 8½, War and Peace, Medium Cool and Fitzcarraldo.

Luhrmann's influence has extended outside the traditional realm of media and entertainment. Deeply involved in the fashion and art worlds, Luhrmann's No. 5 the Film for Chanel not only holds a Guinness World Record for the highest budget for an advertising commercial ever produced, but pioneered the now commonplace genre of fashion film and branded content. Luhrmann works closely with the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Anna Wintour Costume Center, having chaired the annual Met Gala as well as producing a short film for the museum, celebrating Miuccia Prada and Elsa Schiaparelli. More recently, he and his wife Catherine Martin have adapted their style for projects in events, retail, architecture and design with Barneys New York and developer and hotelier Alan Faena.

In November 2022, Lurhmann featured in Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4; his choice of favourite track, book and luxury item were "Che gelida manina" from Puccini's La bohème (sung by Pavarotti), Tolstoy's War and Peace, and a silk eye mask respectively.

Awards and honours

Luhrmann was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in the 2025 King's Birthday Honours for "eminent service to the arts as a filmmaker, to the theatre, to cultural heritage, and to the development of artistic talent".

Media appearances

In September 2009, Luhrmann made an appearance as a guest judge on Dancing with the Stars. Luhrmann participated on the NPR radio quiz program Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! in 2013.

Luhrmann's song "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" was discussed in March 2020 on the BBC Radio 5 Live Chiles on Friday programme with Charlotte McDonald. It featured an interview from the documentary with Australian voice over artist, Lee Perry.

In popular culture

In 2022, the writers of the Israeli satirical TV program The Jews Are Coming made a tribute in Hebrew to Luhrmann's version of "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" with Moses standing before the Israelites and quoting the Ten Commandments with the background music from "Sunscreen" and several parts closely translated from Luhrmann's text, such as getting to know your parents before they disappear.