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John Hillcoat

A director who got his start creating rock videos, John Hillcoat was born in Australia, but grew up in Canada. His knack for the arts was revealed at an early age when his paintings were featured in one of Canada's oldest art galleries. He graduated from film school in Melbourne, and his first project was working with the Australian alternative group INXS. Hillcoat's first major picture was co-penning and directing "Ghosts... of the Civil Dead," a violent, revealing film on prison life that featured Aussie alt-rock hero Nick Cave as an actor and co-writer. During the 1990s, Hillcoat directed numerous music videos for well-known bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees and Depeche Mode. He later collaborated again with Cave by helming a short film featuring his band, the Bad Seeds. Their professional relationship bloomed when Hillcoat directed Cave's Western screenplay "The Proposition," starring Guy Pearce as an outlaw forced to confront his dangerous fugitive brother. The movie won numerous awards from the Australian Film Institute and even a prize at the Venice Film Festival. Hillcoat's entrance into American cinema was marked by directing the 2009 post-apocalyptic drama "The Road," with Viggo Mortensen playing a father trying to survive and protect his son in a grim landscape. Three years later, he returned with the tense period drama "Lawless," once again working with Pearce and a Cave script.