His full name is Mark Anthony "Baz" Luhrmann and he was born onSeptember 17, 1962 in Sydney, Australia. The nickname Baz comes from his father Leonard who decided to use it instead of Mark in the late Seventies. In 1983 he began studying acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Kensington, a suburb of the Australiancapital. There he graduated in 1985. Meanwhile between 1981 and 1982 hestarted acting in television and cinema movies. The first film as a director wasStrictly Ballroom in 1992, considered the first of The Red Curtain Trilogy. Beyond winning several awards including one at Cannes, it became one of Australia's most successful films in the world, in fact compared to the costs that were 3 meagermillion dollars, it collected 80 million Australian dollars. After the great success of the second, Romeo + Juliet in 1996, he ended the trilogy with the exuberant, kitsch, spectacular and highly successful musical Moulin Rouge!. The 2001 film with the Australian actress Nicole Kidman and the English actor Ewan McGregor was much more ambitious and expensive but despite the cost of 50 million dollars it collected 180 million dollars. It triumphed in Cannes and received a lot of awards including a Golden Globe to Kidman. In 2003 he made a nice modern transposition of La Boheme by Puccini. He got back to cinema with Australia,starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, it collected enough money to cover its costs and the critics are magnanimous with this "Gone with the Wind"-style melodramawhich hason its side an underground cynicism that makes it enjoyable. It’s been more successful outside the United States. The theatre takes more and more space but Baz reaches his greatest success with the new version of The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald. The 2013 movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey McGuire is the most expensive film Luhrmann ever did (more than 100 million dollars), but it collected more than 350 million dollars worldwide. Presented at Cannes, it won two minor Academy Awards. In 2016 he created the TVseries The Get DownaboutBronx teenagers, which is having a great success with critics and audiences in its first season.
