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Bruce Beresford

 
 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Bruce Beresford
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Beresford, Bruce, 1940-, Australian film director, b. Sydney, grad. Sydney Univ. (1962). Beresford moved to England, worked for the British Film Institute (1966-71), and made several modest films. Returning home in 1971, he became known as one of Australia's "new wave" directors, excelling particularly at intimate period dramas. His first popular success was the darkly humorous Don's Party (1975). He scored his first real hit with the intense Breaker Morant (1979), based on a Boer War incident. In the early 1980s, Beresford moved to the United States, where he won considerable praise with the subtle, Texas-set Tender Mercies (1982). His greatest success was the Academy Award-winning Driving Miss Daisy (1989), a moving tale of friendship between a wealthy Southern widow and her African-American chauffeur. His other films include The Getting of Wisdom (1977), Crimes of the Heart (1986), Black Robe (1991), Paradise Road (1997), and Bride of the Wind (2001). He is also a screenwriter and producer, and has directed a number of opera productions.

Bibliography

See study by P. Coleman (1993).

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Director: Bruce Beresford
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Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Actors
  • Born: Aug 16, 1940 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  • Occupation: Director, Writer
  • Active: '70s-2000s
  • Major Genres: Drama, Comedy
  • Career Highlights: Breaker Morant, Black Robe, Aria
  • First Major Screen Credit: The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972)

Biography

One of Australia's most popular and well-known directors, Bruce Beresford got his start producing short documentaries as the head of the British Film Institute Production Board from 1966 to 1970. After returning to Australia in 1971, he directed his first features, the rowdy Barry Crocker and Barry Humphries comedies The Adventures Of Barry McKenzie and Barry McKenzie Holds His Own, which he also co-scripted. Both films found great commercial success in Beresford's native country and helped to establish their director's reputation.

Beresford began attracting international attention in the late 1970s and early '80s with the satire Don's Party, the period drama The Getting of Wisdom, and Breaker Morant, a bitter account of the Boer War. The latter film, which was screened in competition at the 1980 Cannes Festival, won a particular amount of acclaim and a number of honors, including the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film.

In 1983, Beresford began making films in the States with the admired drama of a country singer, Tender Mercies; following that success (he won a Best Director Academy Award nomination for his work), his track record proved decidedly erratic, from the silliness of King David (1985), to his well-received adaptation of Beth Henley's tragi-comedy Crimes of the Heart (1986) to the critically acclaimed popular drama Driving Miss Daisy.

In 1991, Beresford's The Black Robe, a drama revolving around one of the more tumultuous periods in Canadian history, scored him another critical victory. As with his work during the previous decade, however, Beresford's subsequent efforts were erratic: while Mister Johnson (1991) and Silent Fall (1994), met with some favorable--if limited--recognition, films like A Good Man in Africa (1994) and the Sharon Stone death row drama Last Dance (1996), proved to be failures. He bounced back in 1997 with Paradise Road, a World War II drama starring Cate Blanchett, Glenn Close, and Frances McDormand, and in 1999 he directed Double Jeopardy, a thriller starring Ashley Judd and Tommy Lee Jones. ~ All Movie Guide
Wikipedia: Bruce Beresford
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Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia
Bruce Beresford
Born 16 August 1940 (1940-08-16) (age 69)
Paddington, Sydney, Australia
Occupation Film director
Years active 1972 - present

Bruce Beresford (born 16 August 1940) is an Australian film director, writer, and producer of such films as Breaker Morant, Tender Mercies and Driving Miss Daisy.

Contents

Career

Born in Sydney to Leslie and Lona Beresford, he grew up in the (then) outer western suburb of Toongabbie. He attended The King's School, Sydney.

In a 2007 interview on Radio National in Australia (on Late Night Live), he said that he moved to England at the end of 1962 but could not get a job in the unionised film industry there, so he answered an advertisement for a film editing job in Nigeria, where he worked for two years. He now works both in Australia and the United States. He was previously wed to Rhoisin Patricia Harrison and married Virginia Duigan in 1985. Their daughter Trilby Beresford acts, whilst his daughter with his first wife Cordelia Beresford is a cinematographer.

Bruce Beresford found wide critical success as a director for his 1980 film Breaker Morant. As a director, Beresford storyboards and meticulously plans each individual scene.[1]

Following the success of Breaker Morant, Beresford was offered dozens of Hollywood scripts including Tender Mercies, which had already been rejected by many American directors. Beresford very much enjoyed and agreed to direct it. Several people involved with the American film had reservations about an Australian directing a movie about a country western star; Beresford himself also found the decision strange, but did not voice his thoughts because he so wanted to direct the movie. Beresford and actor Robert Duvall, who played the lead character of Mac Sledge, did not get along well during the production and often clashed during filming, including one day in which Beresford walked off the set in frustration. Tender Mercies, which was released in 1983, earned Beresford his only Academy Award nomination for Best Director.[1]

In August 2007 he published a memoir, Josh Hartnett Definitely Wants To Do This... True Stories From A Life In The Screen Trade.[2]

In addition to films, Bruce Beresford has also directed opera and theatre productions, including,in 2009, a Melbourne Theatre Company performance of Moonlight and Magnolias[3].

Furthermore, Bruce Beresford was elected President of the International Jury of the 2008 Asia Pacific Screen Awards

Contemporaries / friends

Filmography

Notes and references

  1. ^ a b Bruce Beresford (actor), Robert Duvall (actor), Horton Foote (actor), Gary Hertz (director). (2002-04-16). Miracles & Mercies. [Documentary]. West Hollywood, California: Blue Underground. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383509/. Retrieved 2008-01-28. 
  2. ^ (ISBN 9780732284398) [1]
  3. ^ "Bruce Beresford takes a screen break for theatre". The Australian. 2009-02-23. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25090882-16947,00.html. Retrieved 2009-02-23. 

External links


v • d • e
Films directed by Bruce Beresford

The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972) · Barry McKenzie Holds His Own (1974) · Side by Side (1975) · Don's Party (1976) · The Getting of Wisdom (1978) · Money Movers (1978) · Breaker Morant (1980) · The Club (1980) · Puberty Blues (1981) · Tender Mercies (1983) · King David (1985) · The Fringe Dwellers (1986) · Crimes of the Heart (1986) · Her Alibi (1989) · Driving Miss Daisy (1989) · Mister Johnson (1990) · Black Robe (1991) · Rich in Love (1993) · A Good Man in Africa (1994) · Silent Fall (1994) · Last Dance (1996) · Paradise Road (1997) · Sydney - A Story of a City (1999) · Double Jeopardy (1999) · Bride of the Wind (2001) · Evelyn (2002) · The Contract (2006) · Mao's Last Dancer (2009)

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Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
Director. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Bruce Beresford".  Read more