George Miller (filmmaker)

Not to be confused with George T. Miller.

George Miller
Miller at a Happy Feet Two event in 2011.
Born	George Miliotis (1945-03-03) 3 March 1945 Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Nationality	Greek/Australian
Other names	Dr. George Miller
Education	Sydney Boys High School
Alma mater	University of New South Wales
Occupation(s)	Film director, film producer, screenwriter and physician
Years active	1970–present

George Miller AO (born George Miliotis, 3 March 1945) is a Greek/Australian film director, screenwriter, producer, and former medical doctor. He is best known for his Mad Max franchise, but has been involved in a wide range of projects. These include the Academy Award-winning Babe and Happy Feet film series.

Miller is co-founder of the production houses Kennedy Miller Mitchell, formerly known as Kennedy Miller, and Dr. D Studios. His younger brother Bill Miller and Doug Mitchell have been producers on almost all the films in Miller's later career, since the death of his original producing partner Byron Kennedy.

In 2006 Miller won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for Happy Feet. He has been nominated for three other Academy Awards: Best Original Screenplay in 1992 for Lorenzo's Oil, and Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay in 1995 for Babe.

Early life

Miller was born in Brisbane, Queensland, to Greek immigrant parents: Dimitri (Jim) Castrisios Miller and Angela Balson. Dimitri Miller was from the Greek island of Kythira and he anglicised his surname from Miliotis to Miller when he emigrated to Australia; the Balson family were Greek refugees from Anatolia. The couple married and settled in Chinchilla and had four sons. The first two were the non-identical twins George and John. Chris and Bill Miller followed.

George attended Ipswich Grammar School and later Sydney Boys High School, then studied medicine at the University of New South Wales with his twin brother John. While in his final year at medical school (1971), George and his younger brother Chris made a one-minute short film that won them first prize in a student competition. In 1971, George attended a Film Workshop at Melbourne University where he met fellow student, Byron Kennedy, with whom he formed a lasting friendship and production partnership, until Kennedy's death in a helicopter crash in 1983. In 1972, Miller completed his residency at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital, spending his time-off crewing on short experimental films. The pair subsequently collaborated on numerous works.

Career

Miller's background in medicine is reflected in the main character in his Mad Max movies, Max Rockatansky. This is a reference to Baron Carl von Rokitansky, who developed the most common procedure used to remove the internal organs at autopsy, still called the "Rokitansky procedure".

Miller wrote and directed the Mad Max movies starring Mel Gibson (Mad Max, Mad Max 2 (subtitled in the United States as The Road Warrior), and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome); co-wrote Babe and wrote and directed its sequel; and co-wrote (with Nick Enright) and directed Lorenzo's Oil. He also directed The Witches of Eastwick, starring Jack Nicholson, Susan Sarandon, Cher and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Miller co-produced and co-directed many acclaimed miniseries for Australian television including The Dismissal (1983) and The Cowra Breakout (1984).

Miller's role as producer of Flirting, Dead Calm and the TV mini-series Bangkok Hilton and Vietnam, all starring Nicole Kidman, was instrumental in the early development of her career.

Miller was also the creator of Happy Feet, a musical epic about the life of penguins in Antarctica. The Warner Bros. produced film was released in November 2006. As well as being a runaway box office success, Happy Feet has also brought Miller his third Academy Award nomination, and his first win in the category of Best Animated Feature. In 2011 the Happy Feet sequel Happy Feet Two was released.

Miller is the Patron of the Australian Film Institute and the BIFF (Brisbane International Film Festival) and a co-patron of the Sydney Film Festival.

Millers next project will be the fourth Mad Max film, currently titled Mad Max: Fury Road.

...ask Dr. George Miller today and he'll say that all of his movies are one and the same, whether they focus on human society or the animal kingdom, and whether they unfold against the sands of the Australian outback, the suburbs of Washington, D.C., or the ice shelves of the Antarctic. "I honestly see no difference between the essential elemental story of, let's say, The Road Warrior, Lorenzo's Oil and Babe," Miller told me earlier this month during a visit to L.A. to promote his latest film, the animated musical Happy Feet.

— L.A. Weekly, (2006)

Kennedy Miller Mitchell

Kennedy Miller Mitchell is an Australian film production company founded in 1973 by George Miller and producer Byron Kennedy, as Kennedy Miller. Kennedy died in 1983. Miller kept his name in the company. In 2009, George Miller and Doug Mitchell renamed the company Kennedy Miller Mitchell.

Dr. D Studios

Dr. D Studios is a new state-of-the-art production company founded by George Miller and Doug Mitchell. The Sydney based studio produced in 2011 Happy Feet Two and is working with Kennedy Miller Mitchell on Mad Max 4: Fury Road.

Further reading

• Foundas, Scott (23 November 2006). "International Man of Myths". LA Weekly.

Filmography

Year	Film	Credit
1979	Mad Max	Director, writer
1980	The Chain Reaction	Director (car chase sequences), associate producer
1981	Mad Max 2	Director, writer, additional editor
1983	Twilight Zone: The Movie	Segment Nightmare at 20,000 Feet director
1983	The Dismissal (TV)	Director, writer, producer
1985	Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome	Director, writer, producer
1987	The Witches of Eastwick	Director
1987	The Year My Voice Broke	Producer
1989	Dead Calm	Producer, 2nd unit director
1991	Flirting	Producer
1992	Lorenzo's Oil	Director, writer, producer
1995	Babe	Writer, producer
1997	40,000 Years of Dreaming	Director, writer, presenter
1998	Babe: Pig in the City	Director, writer, producer
2006	Happy Feet	Director, writer, producer
2011	Happy Feet Two	Director, producer, writer
2015	Mad Max: Fury Road	Director, producer, writer

Awards and recognition

• 1982: Won Australian Film Institute Award for Mad Max 2, Best Director and Best Film Editing (shared with others)
• 1987: Won Australian Film Institute Award for The Year My Voice Broke, Best Picture (as producer), shared with Doug Mitchell and Terry Hayes
• 1990: Won Australian Film Institute Award for Flirting, Best Picture (as producer), shared with Doug Mitchell and Terry Hayes
• 1993: Academy Award nomination for Lorenzo's Oil, Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, shared with co-writer Nick Enright
• 1996: Two Academy Award nominations for Babe, Best Picture (as producer) and Best Screenplay Based on Material Previously Published, shared with co-writer Chris Noonan
• 1996: Appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO)
• 1999: Received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of New South Wales
• 2007: Won Academy Award for Happy Feet, Best Animated Feature
• 2007: Won BAFTA Award for Happy Feet, Best Animated Feature
• 2007: Received The Queensland – United States Personal Achievement Award at the Queensland Expatriate Awards at the Rainbow Room in New York
• 2007: Received the FIAPF Award for Outstanding Achievement in Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.
• 2007 (April): Awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree by the Australian Film Television and Radio School.
• 2007: Received the AFI Global Achievement Award
• 2008: Awarded an honorary Doctorate from the Griffith University.
• 2009: Awarded the French Order of the Arts and Letters.
• 2010: First non-US Filmmaker to be awarded "honorary member" status among the VES.

External links

• George Miller at IMDb