Information by Baz the Great!

Full name:  Bazmark Anthony Luhrmann
Date of birth:  17 September 1962
Place of birth:  Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Married to:  Catherine Martin (since 26 January 1997)
Daughter: Lillian (Lilly) Amanda Luhrmann (born 10 October 2003)
Son: William Alexander Luhrmann (born 8 June 2005)
Founder of:  Bazmark Inq. (with Catherine Martin)
(inc. subsidiaries Bazmark Design, Bazmark Film, Bazmark Live and BazmarkMusic)
Previous films:  Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge
Upcoming film:  Australia

Mark Anthony Luhrmann was born in Sydney, Australia, on 17 September 1962, in the back seat of a car in which his mother was being rushed to hospital. While he was still a baby, his family moved to rural New South Wales, and Luhrmann grew up in the small town of Herons Creek, where he had an extremely active childhood.

"What kind of kid was I then? The same kind of kid I am now. Extremely busy. My father was a bit mad, you see. He thought that we had to be the renaissance kids of Herons Creek. We had to learn commando training as well as photography, how to grow corn as well as how to play a musical instrument. We were up at 5 in the morning, and then we just went until we dropped. The town consisted of a gas station, a pig farm, a dress shop and a movie theatre - and we ran them all."

Luhrmann has described his father, Leonard, a former naval diver and Vietnam veteran, as "very intense". When Luhrmann wasn't working at his father's gas station, his other activities included studying Greek, horseback riding and ballroom dancing. Luhrmann and his three siblings were always creative, operating a faux radio station and making amateur movies.

"In terms of a creative life, there's very little difference in the feeling of what I do now and the way it felt when I was 10 and 12 years old in Herons Creek. It feels exactly the same. It's the same thing: Projects! Things! Make! Do! Create! What if! Let's go!"

It was at his father's movie theatre that the young Luhrmann became enthralled by the world of movies and the power of story telling. Luhrmann's father took over running the movie theatre after the previous owner died of a heart attack. He had been a naval diver and photographer in the Vietnam War, and knew how to thread film.  Luhrmann has very fond memories of watching films with his father each night in the projection room. He especially loved musicals such as Hello, Dolly!, The Sound Of Music and Paint Your Wagon.

Today, Luhrmann is well known for embracing the emotional power of music. In his works, he has embraced a variety of musical styles from contemporary to classical opera, and his lack of prejudice concerning music was encountered as a child.

"When I was a kid in an outback town in New South Wales, all we read about in the papers or heard on the radio was news about the building of the Sydney Opera House. So the word was never strange to me. Then my dad bought a fancy Akai reel-to-reel tape recorder. It came with a demo tape, containing tracks illustrating every type of music - from the Beatles and Tijuana brass to country and western, Broadway musical and opera - 'Vesti la giubba', to be precise, from Pagliacci. We played that tape over and over again at home, so opera has always been just another type of music for me - better or worse doesn't come into it."

Luhrmann's fascination with characterisation in his projects also stems from his childhood. After encountering a variety of interesting people during the day while working at the gas station, it seemed natural that Luhrmann would start to use these experiences as a source for his own creativity.

"As a kid pumping gas, I saw an endless stream of humanity arrive from the big city, pass through and then leave. Everyone from families, Hare Krishnas, lovers breaking up ... and you're invisible to them. I guess that's why I've always been interested in people's characters. Who's that person? What's that person? Where are they coming from?"

This world that Luhrmann found so fascinating ended abruptly at the age of 12 when his parent's divorced. He has referred to this as a as a "schism" in the family, and has described the break-up as "horrible" and "a dark cloud that hung over our family for years and then suddenly burst." His father was tackling alcoholism, and his mother, Barbara, wanted to make up for the years she felt she had wasted living in the outback. Luhrmann has said, "I don't know just what Mum felt she had been missing, but she sure let everyone know how unhappy she was." Once his parents had divorced, Luhrmann chose to stay with his father. 

A few years later, Luhrmann's father remarried, and the unhappy circumstances surrounding this relationship drove the 15-year-old Luhrmann back to Sydney to his mother. Luhrmann has admitted, "And as if things weren't bad enough for me already, she enrolled me in an all-boys school run by the Christian Brothers. For me, that was a retrograde step. It spun my world out. But that didn't stop me. There never was a time that I wasn't making something - magic shows, a modern-dress Henry IV. I used to take TV shows and redo them as plays. Starsky And Hutch was a big fave."

Along with his two brothers, Luhrmann had a crew cut for much of his childhood, which his father insisted upon and, Luhrmann admits, "made our life hell". However, when he moved back to Sydney, Luhrmann let his hair grow, and quickly picked up the nickname 'Baz', which was a rather derogatory reference to Basil Brush, a bushy-tailed fox puppet that appeared on a popular BBC television series. Luhrmann decided to turn this mockery into an act of defiance and, around 1979, officially changed his name to Bazmark. He has explained that the names Baz and Mark are "the two sides of who I am". Luhrmann also admits that hair remains somewhat of an obsession, and he has become known in the entertainment industry for his ever-changing hairstyles.

Luhrmann decided to pursue a career in acting and tried to join the prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Art. However, at 17 years old, he was rejected for being too young. Luhrmann's determination paid off soon afterwards when he was cast in the 1981 Australian film, The Winter Of Our Dreams, starring Judy Davis and Bryan Brown. Luhrmann explains, "I was Pete the Pimp. Fancy that. Not old enough for theatre school, but old enough to play a pimp." Other notable acting roles include a 1981 stint in the endearing Australian television series, A Country Practice, and a performance in a docu-drama called Kids from the Cross, which he also co-directed. However, this documentary was turned into an embarrassing programme by a television company, and this unpleasant experience resulted in what Luhrmann calls "a very, very, very strong drive to be creatively responsible."

When Luhrmann was finally accepted into the prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, he found the programme to be too restrictive, and did not enjoy the experience. As a drama student, Luhrmann was entitled to free tickets to Australian Opera, but he didn't much like what he saw, "Well, the first thing was The Tales of Hoffmann, and it was such bad theatre I thought it must be a joke that I didn't get. But it got me interested in the problem, and I was taken on by Australian Opera to help with developing a young audience. They believed in me, and I owe them a lot."

In 1985, during Australia's bicentennial celebrations, Luhrmann was chosen, out of many contenders, to assist with Peter Brook's epic play, The Mahabarata. Brook, an acclaimed British director, offered Luhrmann a simple piece of advice, "get out and do something."

The following year, Luhrmann devised, staged and directed a thirty minute play called Strictly Ballroom, a play that would later be the basis for his first feature film. Following performances of Strictly Ballroom at the Institute, Luhrmann took his play to the World Youth Theater Festival in what was then Czechoslovakia, where it won awards for Best Production and Best Director. During the same year, he directed Crocodile Creek, a musical theatre production set and performed in the Australian outback.

After graduating from the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Luhrmann formed an independent theatre group called the Six Years Old Company. Serving as the group's Artistic Director, he revived Strictly Ballroom for a highly successful season at the Wharf Theater in Sydney. He then went on to stage the show at the World Expo in Brisbane. The play also began Luhrmann's hugely successful collaboration with co-writer, Craig Pearce.

In between incarnations of Strictly Ballroom, Luhrmann worked on inventive productions of classic and original operas. In 1987, Luhrmann devised, along with composer Felix Meagher, the experimental opera, Lake Lost, for the Australian Opera. It was while looking for a designer for Lake Lost that Luhrmann met Catherine Martin, a fellow student at NIDA, who would become his creative and life partner. Lake Lost was Luhrmann's first opera, and earned him the Victorian Green Room Award for Best Director. Martin co-designed the sets and won the Victorian Green Room Award for Open Design, along with friend, Angus Strathie.

In 1989, Luhrmann and Martin staged a large scale musical event at the Sydney Town Hall called Dance Hall. For this unique Sydney Festival event, they recreated a 1940's dance hall and invited people to relive the night celebrating the end of World War II.

In 1990, Luhrmann devised a highly acclaimed production of Puccini's famed La Bohème for the Australian Opera, with Martin creating the sets and costumes. The production was a huge success, and won the Mo Award for Operatic Performance of the Year. Luhrmann's interpretation of La Bohème was again performed in 1993 and 1996 at the Sydney Opera House, and performances have been broadcast across the world.

After his initial production of La Bohème, Luhrmann's next project was his interpretation of Benjamin Britten's operatic version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night's Dream for the Australian Opera. This was a Hindu version set in colonial India, with Martin again creating the sets and costumes. After successful seasons in Sydney and Melbourne, Luhrmann was invited to take his unique production to the 1994 Edinburgh Festival, where it won the Critic's Prize.

In the same year as producing A Midsummer Night's Dream, Luhrmann, Martin and old friend Bill Marron served as guest editors for the signature issue of Australian Vogue magazine. The magazine included features on Nicole Kidman and Kylie Minogue, two celebrities who Luhrmann would later work with on his film, Moulin Rouge.

Other notable past achievements for Luhrmann and Martin include orchestrating the campaign for the re-election of the Australian Labor Party candidate, Paul Keating, who ultimately retained his position as Australia's Prime Minister, and creating the music video for John Paul Young's hit single, Love is in the Air, a song which featured in Luhrmann's film, Strictly Ballroom.

Luhrmann's first movie, Strictly Ballroom (1992), starring Paul Mercurio and Tara Morice, was a romantic comedy centred around the world of competitive ballroom dancing in Australia, and based on Luhrmann's original play.  The film premiered at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival, and was a great success, winning the Festival's Prix de Ia Jeunesse and a special mention for the Camera D'Or. Achieving over US$80 million at the box office worldwide, Strictly Ballroom went on to win many   international awards, including eight Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards and three British Academy Awards (BAFTA's). The film also received a Golden Globe nomination, the Audience Prize from the Sydney and Melbourne Film Festivals, the Toronto Film Festival's Carlsberg People's Choice Award, and the Chicago Film Festival's Best First Feature Film Award.

After the success of Strictly Ballroom, Twentieth Century Fox took note of Luhrmann and signed him to a three-year, first-look deal which allowed him to go ahead with his modern take on the classic Shakespearian play, Romeo and Juliet.

Luhrmann's second film, Romeo + Juliet (1996), starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, was an exhilarating modern interpretation of the classic Shakespearian play. The movie opened in the number one position in the US box office and grossed over US$140 million worldwide. The soundtrack also achieved triple platinum status in the U S.  Romeo + Juliet went on to win numerous awards, including four BAFTA's (including Best Direction and Best Adapted Screenplay), four Berlin Film Festival Awards (including Best Direction), and an Academy Award nomination for Best Art Direction for Martin.

Luhrmann and Martin were married on 26 January 1997, Martin's birthday and Australia Day. They were married in an office, but the following day celebrated with a reception at the Sydney Opera House. Luhrmann has said, "We built a church on the stage, and 'L'Amour' was the back of the church... It was actually fantastic. You wouldn't believe it, but with all of our experience with stage management, the bride was incredibly late."

In 1997, Luhrmann and Martin co-founded their Sydney-based production company, Bazmark Inq, and subsidiaries Bazmark Design, Bazmark Film, Bazmark Live and Bazmark Music. They then began working on the concept album, Something for Everybody. This album contained a collection of miscellaneous songs, including the popular single, Now Until the Break of Day. The album went platinum in Australia, and also featured the inspirational track that Luhrmann produced, Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen), which went platinum in the United States and Britain. The CD was also the first Bazmark product to bear the company crest, a design which resembles the Australian coat-of-arms.  Along the bottom of the crest is the Bazmark motto (also the tag line for Strictly Ballroom) - "A life lived in fear is a life half lived."

In 1998, Bazmark Inq. produced Collette Dinnigan's 1998 Autumn/Winter Collection at the Louvre in Paris. The production for Collette Dinnigan, an acclaimed Australian fashion designer, was directed by Martin, and the pair have become good friends.

On 2 May 1998, Fox Studios announced in a press release that the "News Corporation has entered into a far-reaching, multi-faceted deal with Baz Luhrmann, one of the world's leading creative forces in theatrical and motion picture productions". It was a deal that allows Luhrmann and his team at Bazmark Inq. to develop projects in any medium, including film, music and theatre. The landmark agreement was announced at, and was closely tied to, the 2 May opening of Fox Studios Australia, which was produced by Bazmark Live. Bazmark Live then went on to devise the streetscape for an area called the Backlot at Fox Studios Australia. As part of this, the team produced the show Lights Camera Chaos, which was written and directed by celebrated Australian theatre director, Barrie Kosky.

Luhrmann's next movie would be his most flamboyant to date. It was also the film that adhered most blatantly to what had come to be known as his 'Red Curtain' productions. His three films subsequently came together form the Red Curtain Trilogy.

The Red Curtain style of film making was devised by Luhrmann with certain specifics in mind that serve to actively promote audience participation. These are: 1) the audience knows how it will end right from the start; 2) the storyline is thin and simple; 3) the world created in the film is one of heightened reality; and 4) there is to be a specific device driving the story, whether it be dance, iambic pentameter or characters bursting out in song.

Luhrmann's third film, Moulin Rouge (2001), starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, was an elaborate romantic musical set in late 19th Century Paris. Based partly on the Orpheus myth, and also drawing from La Bohème and other sources, its lavish production design and stunning cinematic style was embraced by many. However, it premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival to a divided critical response, with some finding fault in the thin plot. Despite the mixed response, almost all agreed that Moulin Rouge helped to revitalise what had become a neglected genre of film making. The movie received a moderate box office result in the US, but its popularity increased as time went on, and Moulin Rouge ended up grossing over US$170 million worldwide. The film received 3 Golden Globe Awards, and was nominated for 8 Academy Awards (including Best Picture), with Martin winning for Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration. Moulin Rouge was popular in the UK and Australia, and was nominated for 11 BAFTA's and 10 AFI awards. The film won 3 BAFTA's and 5 AFI awards,the latter of which included Best Costume Design and Best Production Design for Martin.

After receiving some mixed reviews for Moulin Rouge, Luhrmann devoted months to promotion of his next project all over the world. Luhrmann was bringing his production of Puccini's La Bohème to Broadway, and wanted to make sure it had a maximum chance of success. He has recalled darkly, "If something you make is like a child, there were a lot of people who would have liked to have seen it dead."

As a result, the opening of La Bohème was postponed so many times that Luhrmann began losing enthusiasm for the project, and "everyone was at the point of deciding whether to retreat or go on". However, then came September 11, and a visit to the Ground Zero site made Luhrmann and Martin realise that their show should go on. Luhrmann explains, "I think one has to be extremely delicate about this... It can be exploited in an inappropriate way. The idea of doing La Bohème... being here, making something beautiful that is about humanity. Maybe it seemed an indulgent refuge, but it seemed really important. I'm not saying it was gonna change the world, but it felt like it could be useful. It could be useful to make an effort to create something of human beauty, with beautiful music and powerful story in a town that had just changed forever."

Luhrmann's production of La Bohème premiered on Broadway on 8 December 2002, following a six week preview run at San Fransisco's Curran Theatre. It proved to be a high risk but hugely successful transition, and the production was declared to be a magnificent re-working of Puccini's masterpiece that appealed to all.

La Bohème showcased Luhrmann's trademark signature of  'L'Amour', the French word for love. Since it was used at Luhrmann and Martin's wedding in 1997, it is a phrase that has appeared, or been implied, throughout all of Luhrmann's works, including both the Sydney and Broadway productions of La Bohème. Luhrmann features the word in the cursive red lettering that resembles the famous Coca Cola symbol and explains, "We've always 'quotated' it, which is a word I made up meaning to quote and make note of, In Strictly Ballroom, the lovers kiss in front of a Coca-Cola sign. In Romeo + Juliet, there's a moment when Romeo walks past "L'Amour" as a Coca-Cola sign -- don't tell Coca-Cola. And in Moulin Rouge, you've got mad love, 'L'Amour Fou.'"

While La Bohème was up and running, Luhrmann took three months off, "It's something I always do after I've finished anything - a quest for spiritual refreshment, I suppose. After Moulin Rouge, I drove out into the Australian outback from Darwin. Three times in a row I ran out of gas. I guess a psychiatrist would interpret it as a desire to break down and be rescued, but I'd also connect it to my feeling that I can never get where I want to be - everything I've done just about crosses the line"

"I only achieve about 60 per cent of what I've dreamed of. Perhaps that's a good thing - if I did ever get the whole way with anything, I think I'd probably want to destroy it."

La Bohème, which ran on Broadway until 29 June 2003, marked the end of an era for Luhrmann. He declared that his production of La Bohème was the final act of his 'Red Curtain' production style. Luhrmann explains, "I hadn't really finished what we began to do 13 years ago. This began as a mission to bring La Bohème to the audience for whom it was originally written, and that audience is everybody. And the place to find an audience that includes everyone is Broadway. The Sydney production was a very special experience for us. At the time, we were bohemians ourselves, 25-year-olds. But I turned 40 in San Francisco on the day [the new production] opened. I think we've brought more gravity to the piece; it's a little bit more about the melancholia of saying goodbye to one's youth and embracing the future."

"I'm through with Romeo and Juliet and boy meets girl, and on to Macbeth and man kills beast."

Luhrmann is now set to embrace a new chapter in his life, and has turned his attention to historical epics. He has expressed interest in developing a trio of epics - one Australian, one Russian, and one about the life of Alexander the Great. It is the latter of these three projects that Luhrmann originally set his sights on for his "next big gesture".

Pre-production of Alexander the Great began in mid-2003. Leonardo DiCaprio was set to play Alexander with Nicole Kidman as Alexander's mother, Olympias. Scouting of locations took place in Australia and filming was set to commence in early 2004 with a reported budget of around US$160 million. Unfortunately, in November 2003, it was announced that production would be put on hold for two or more years, and Oliver Stone went on to make his own film, Alexander, which was released in the US in November 2004. While Luhrmann has expressed his desire to still make his own Alexander movie one day, the project has been put on hold for now.

Luhrmann went on to complete a unique project that stemmed back to his Red Curtain Trilogy method. However, this time, instead of a film or play, he created a commercial (or 'film', as Luhrmann prefers it being referred to) for the Chanel No. 5 fragrance. Shooting took place on the Fox Studios backlot in Sydney, Australia, in December 2003, and the production was rumoured to be one of the most expensive advertisements ever made. The two minute film, which starred Nicole Kidman as the most famous actress in the world, was released worldwide in November 2004 and reappeared on screens in 2005 and 2006. The film was a stunning production that was hailed a great success.

Luhrmann is considered one of the most innovative directors of all time. His instinctive talent for tapping into the spirit of the times has earned him praise from across the world. Yet, despite his success, Luhrmann still worries about how his works will be perceived by audiences, "It's all a risk. I shake and fear just as much as any other creative person. Every day you wake up to a deafening chorus of 'That will never work! You're doomed!'''

However, it is Luhrmann's determined ability to go against convention that is earning him international appreciation. Roxanne Messina Captor, the executive director of the San Francisco Film Society, has said, "I'm a big fan of his work. He's innovative and he takes risks and he pushes the envelope. He takes something that could be staid and makes it interesting for a modern audience. If people really, really love it or really, really hate it, then you know you've done something. You want that kind of passion out of your audience.''

Martin, whom Luhrmann has affectionately dubbed CM, also has great respect for her husband's work, "He knows how to push people to do more and do it better than they possibly would if left to their own devices. Whoever you are within the fabric of the process, you know you are valued, and that makes you contribute more.''

Luhrmann and Martin celebrated the birth of their first child, Lillian (Lilly) Amanda Luhrmann, on 10 October 2003 in Sydney, Australia. Less than two years later, they celebrated the birth of their second child, William Alexander Luhrmann, on 8 June 2005. And now, Luhrmann enters brand new territory with his venture into historical epics, and the world waits in anticipation for his next creation, the long-awaited feature film, Australia.

Click here to read a scanned article that accompanied this early photo
of Catherine Martin holding one-and-a-half month old Lillian.
Click here to view further images of Lillian taken in January 2004.
Click here to read the article announcing William Alexander's birth.

Click here to read a fascinating article featuring an interview with
Baz Luhrmann during La Bohème rehearsals in San Fransisco.

Click here to read an insightful interview with Catherine Martin taken
just a few days after she won two Academy Awards for Moulin Rouge.

Click here to read about my trip to Sydney,
including my visit to the House of Iona!

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The majority of information featured in on this page has been compiled from the following sources:
'All that Baz' - Toronto Star, 'Break a Leg' - The Washington Post (both articles can be found here)
Official Romeo + Juliet website, Filmbug.com, Hollywood.com

Compiled by Vanessa
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