Peter Weir (born August 21, 1944, Sydney, Australia) is an Australianfilm director and screenwriter known for intelligent emotional dramas that frequently explore the relationship between characters and their socialenvironment. He contributed to a renaissance in Australian filmmaking and directed a string of acclaimed Hollywood movies.

Weir grew up in a suburb ofSydney. After briefly attending theUniversity of Sydney, he traveled to Europe in 1965. By the time he returned toAustralia the following year, he had decided on a career in entertainment. Weir began working as a stagehand for a television network, where he and other employees made short films for fun. Beginning in 1969, he worked for the government-funded Commonwealth Film Unit as a cameraman and director.

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Weir struck out on his own in 1973, and his first feature film, the comic-horrorThe Cars That Ate Paris (1974), which he also wrote, received some critical notice. He won an international audience with the haunting and atmosphericPicnic at Hanging Rock (1975), followed byThe Last Wave (1977), for which he also cowrote the screenplay and which was reviewed more favourably in theUnited States than in Australia. TheWorld War IdramaGallipoli (1981), based on a story by Weir and starringMel Gibson, won eight Australian Film Institute awards and burnished Weir’s international reputation. His last Australian production, which he cowrote as well as directed, was the masterfulThe Year of Living Dangerously (1982). The drama was set inIndonesia around the time of the overthrow of PresidentSukarno and starred Gibson andLinda Hunt.

In 1985 Weir directed his firstHollywood film,Witness, a character-driven thriller for which he received anAcademy Award nomination. He continued to earn acclaim with films such asDead Poets Society (1989), a drama set in a boys’preparatory school in the 1950s,The Truman Show (1998), a fable about thetyranny of the media, andMaster and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), a seafaring epic based on the series by Patrick O’Brian and cowritten by Weir; the movies all earned Weir Oscar nominations for best director. His other films includedThe Mosquito Coast (1986),Green Card (1990),Fearless (1993), andThe Way Back (2010).