John Duigan

John Duigan was born in 1949 in Hampshire, England, of an Australian father and an English mother. In 1961 the family moved to Australia. While studying at Melbourne University, Duigan worked as an actor with two of the leading Australian experimental theatre companies, La Mama and The Australian Performing Group. He also acted in several short films, playing leads in Bryan Davies' Brake Fluid and Nigel Buest's Bonjour Balwyn.

After completing his Masters degree in Philosophy, he began working as a Writer/Director of feature films. A first success, Mouth to Mouth, won the Jury Prize at the 1979 Australian Film Awards. For the multi-award winning mini-series Vietnam, in which he cast Nicole Kidman in her first dramatic role, he won Best Director at the Penguin Television Awards.

Other Australian-based films included Winter of Our Dreams, with Bryan Brown and Judy Davis, for which he was nominated for Best Screenplay at the Australian Film Institute Awards, The Year My Voice Broke, which won AFIs for Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay, the Australian Writer's Guild award for Best Screenplay, Australian Critics Circle award for Best Film and Jury Prize at Rio De Janeiro; Flirting, for which he cast a young Naomi Watts in her first screen role, also an AFI Best Film and Critics Circle winner, and Sirens with Hugh Grant, Best Film winner at St. Petersburg.

From 1994, he was based mainly in the UK, working there and in the United States over the following twelve years. In Mexico he directed Romero, winner of the American Humanitas Prize and Best Film on a Latin-American subject at the Havana Film Festival, The Journey of August King, Molly and Lawn Dogs, winner of the Golden Raven and The Grand Prize of European Fantasy Film at Brussels, and Best Film as chosen by the audience in Athens, Potsdam and Stockholm. In the UK, he directed The Leading Man starring Jon Bon Jovi, from a screenplay written by his sister Virginia, The Parole Officer starring Steve Coogan, and wrote and directed the telemovie Paranoid and the Canadian/UK co-production Head in the Clouds starring Charlize Theron and Penelope Cruz, winner of Best Film and Best Director at the Milan International Film Festival and four Genies at the Canadian Film Awards.

John has had three novels published. Between 2005 and 2010, he returned to his studies in Philosophy to work on a text book of secular ethics, after which he resumed work on film in Australia with Careless Love. He currently divides his time between Australia and England.

Antidote Films