Australian director, producer, and screenwriter

Peter Weir

Peter Lindsay Weir is an Australian retired film director, screenwriter, and producer. He directed films crossing various genres over forty years, such as Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Gallipoli (1981), The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), Witness (1985), Dead Poets Society (1989), Fearless (1993), The Truman Show (1998), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), and The Way Back (2010). He has received six Academy Award nominations and he has won two AACTA Award for Best Direction and two BAFTA Award for Best Direction. In 2022, he was awarded the Academy Honorary Award for his lifetime career achievement.

Born

1944

August 21

Died

Living

Era

1940s

Country

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About

Peter, in brief

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Life timeline

Key dates

1944 Born

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What else happened on this day, through history

959 Eraclus becomes the 25th bishop of Liège.
1140 Song dynasty general Yue Fei defeats an army led by Jin dynasty general Wuzhu at the Battle of Yancheng during the Jin–Song Wars.
1169 Battle of the Blacks: Uprising by the black African forces of the Fatimid army, along with a number of Egyptian emirs and commoners, against Saladin.
1192 Minamoto no Yoritomo becomes Sei-i Taishōgun and the de facto ruler of Japan. (Traditional Japanese date: the 12th day of the seventh month in the third year of the Kenkyū (建久) era).

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The world in 1944

When Peter arrived

april 1 World War II: Navigation errors lead to an accidental American bombing of the Swiss city of Schaffhausen.
april 10 Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler escape from Birkenau death camp.
april 16 World War II: Allied forces start bombing Belgrade, killing about 1,100 people. This bombing fell on the Orthodox Christian Easter.
april 17 Forces of the Communist-controlled Greek People's Liberation Army attack the smaller National and Social Liberation resistance group, which surrenders. Its leader Dimitrios Psarros is murdered.

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Same-day contemporaries

Also born on August 21

Alicia Witt 1975– American actress and musician Archie Griffin 1954– American football player Cameron Winklevoss 1981– American rower and businessman, co-founded ConnectU Carrie-Anne Moss 1967– Canadian actress Donald Dewar 1937–2000 Scottish politician, first First Minister of Scotland (died 2000) Emiliano Mercado del Toro 1891–2007 Puerto Rican-American soldier (died 2007) James FitzJames 1670–1734 1st Duke of Berwick, French general and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire (died 1734) Jules Michelet 1798–1874 French historian and philosopher (died 1874) Melvin Van Peebles 1932– American actor, director, and screenwriter (died 2021)

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Same-year contemporaries

Also born in 1944

Al Kooper 1944– American singer-songwriter and producer Al Michaels 1944– American sportscaster Angélica María 1944– American-born Mexican singer-songwriter and actress Anne Robinson 1944– English journalist and game show host António Variações 1944–1984 Portuguese musician (died 1984) Azizan Abdul Razak 1944–2013 Malaysian politician, 10th Menteri Besar of Kedah (died 2013) Ban Ki-moon 1944– South Korean politician and diplomat, 8th Secretary-General of the United Nations Barry White 1944–2003 American singer-songwriter, pianist, and producer (born 1944) Carlos Alberto Torres 1944–2016 Brazilian footballer and manager (died 2016)

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Keep going

More to explore

Peter's birthday August 21 Peter's zodiac Leo When Peter arrived 1944