Baz Luhrmann

Baz Luhrmann met his future wife, Catherine Martin, while they were both in college. They married on January 26, 1997, and have two children together, daughter Lillian Amanda Luhrmann (born October 10, 2003) and son William Alexander Luhrmann (born on June 8, 2005).

In July 2015, the couple decided to sell their Darlinghurst, Sydney, home and relocate to New York City in order to have a more settled family life.

Baz Luhrmann was born as Mark Anthony Luhrmann on September 17, 1962, in Sydney, Australia to Barbara Carmel (née Brennan) and Leonard Luhrmann. His father operated a petrol station and later a movie theatre in the country town of Herons Creek while his mother ran a dress shop and taught ballroom dancing.

Luhrmann spent the early years of his life in Herons Creek, growing up alongside his two brothers, Brett and Chris. His father’s work at the movie theatre gave him the chance to watch good films for free. This played an influential role in the development of his love for cinema.

While he was still a child, his parents divorced, and Luhrmann, along with his mother and brothers, went back to live in Sydney.

It was his father who gave him the nickname “Baz” due to his afro style hair, after the popular British fictional anthropomorphic fox, Basil Brush. When he was in high school, he legally got his name changed to Bazmark, joining together his nickname and his given first name.

He studied at St Joseph's Hastings Regional School in Port Macquarie from 1975 to 1978 and later attended St Paul's Catholic College, where he participated in a production of Shakespeare's ‘Henry IV, Part 1’.

Baz Luhrmann started off in the entertainment industry as an actor. His first cinematic appearance was in the 1981 romance drama ‘Winter of Our Dreams’. Portraying a street rat named Pete, Luhrmann held his own against two of the biggest stars in contemporary Australian cinema, Judy Davis and Bryan Brown.

He then landed a minor role as a film student in the 1982 thriller ‘The Dark Room’. The film was directed by Paul Harmon, the son of Bill Harmon.

He appeared in the war drama ‘The Highest Honor’ (1982), which was a film based on the Operation Jaywick and Operation Rimau by Z Special Unit during the World War II. Luhrmann was cast as Able Seaman A. W. Huston in what was to be his last film as an actor beyond the sporadic cameos in his own films.

Luhrmann’s first film as a writer and director was the 1992 romantic comedy ‘Strictly Ballroom’. This was the first movie in his Red Curtain Trilogy of theatre-motif-related films.

Luhrmann collaborated on the screenplay with Craig Pearce and Andrew Bovell and the said screenplay was based on Luhrmann’s 1984 critically acclaimed play of the same name. He wrote it during his time as a student at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney.

Baz Luhrmann made his debut on television in the multi-Logie award-winning Australian television soap opera/serial drama ‘A Country Practice’. Appearing in four episodes, he portrayed the role of Jerry Percival between 1981 and 1982. He was also featured in the 1983 television documentary ‘Kids of the Cross’.

Luhrmann returned to television in 2016 as the co-creator of the musical drama television series ‘The Get Down’. The six-episode first part of the show premiered globally on Netflix on August 12, 2016.

The show chronicled the rise of the disco and R&B genres of music in the late 1970s’ South Bronx region of New York City. It received positive reviews from the critics and the audience response was very encouraging as well.

A five-episode second part was streamed on April 7, 2017, marking the conclusion of the series. At the 2017 MPSE Golden Reel Awards, ‘The Get Down’ won the Best Music Editor – Television Short Form award for music producer Jamieson Shaw’s work on the show.