John CurranBirth Place: Heritage: Contact John Curran | 
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We Don’t Live Here Anymore Background: After stints as an illustrator and graphic designer in New York, American film director and screenwriter John Curran spent over a decade working in the Australian movie and advertising industries. During this time, he directed and wrote the masterpiece “Down Rusty Down” (1996), which won the director a Shorts International Film Festival Award and a Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival Award, and his first full-length film, “Praise” (1998). For his directing job, Curran took home the FIPRESCI Award at the 1998 Toronto Film Festival, an AFI nomination, a FCCA nomination, and a Gijón International Film Festival nomination. He was also named Australian IF's Independent Filmmaker of the Year (2000). Curran made his Hollywood debut with the powerful and touching drama “We Don’t Live Here Anymore” (2004), starring Naomi Watts, Mark Ruffalo, Laura Dern and Peter Krause. The film brought Curran a Grand Jury Prize nomination at the Sundance Film Festival and a Grand Special Prize nomination at the Deauville Film Festival. It was followed by the Golden Globe winning “The Painted Veil” (2006), starring Watts and Edward Norton. As for his upcoming project, Curran is scheduled to direct Keira Knightley in “The Beautiful and the Damned,” the third film version of the W. Somerset Maugham book, and Edward Norton and Robert De Niro in “Stone.” Both films are slated for 2010 releases. He also wrote the script for Michael Winterbottom's “The Killer Inside Me” (2010). Curran is married and has a child.
Childhood and Family: John Curran was born on September 11, 1960, in Utica, New York. After high school, he received an art scholarship to Syracuse University, a private research university located in Syracuse, New York. Right after graduation, he worked as a graphic designer, illustrator and production designer in New York before moving to Sydney, Australia, in 1986.
Career: Four years after his move to Sydney, New York native John Curran set up Pod Films and began directing commercials, music videos and short films. His first short, “Down Rusty Down” (1996), which he wrote and directed, was shown in festivals around the globe, including the Sundance Film Festival, the New York Film Festival and the London Film Festival, and won the new filmmaker the Best Short Film-Comedy Award at the 1997 Shorts International Film Festival. He also won the Research Award for International Competition and received a nomination for the Grand Prix at the 1997 Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. The 15-minute length film was also awarded the Golden Tripod for Fictional Drama Shorts - Cinema & TV at the Australian Cinematographers Society. Curran resurfaced in 1998 with his feature film directorial debut, “Praise,” scripted by Andrew McGahan and based on his own novel. Starring Peter Fenton and Sacha Horler, the drama premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on September 11, 1998, and ended up winning the International Critics' Award (FIPRESCI) at the festival. It was also nominated for a British Independent Film for Best Foreign Film - English Language and was included in the New York Times lists of “Top Ten Films” for 2000. In Australia, “Praise” collected ten Australian Film Institute nominations, including a Best Achievement in Direction for Curran, and won three Film Critics Circle of Australia (FCCA) Awards, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Curran also earned a Grand Prix Asturias nomination for Best Feature at the 1999 Gijón International Film Festival and an Australian IF Award for Independent Filmmaker of the Year for 2000. Six years after the acclaimed “Praise,” Curran directed “We Don't Live Here Anymore” (2004), based on the short stories by Andre Dubus, “We Don't Live Here Anymore” and “Adultery.” Debuting at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2004, the American/Canadian drama brought Curran a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize-Dramatic. It went on to screen at various festivals like the Newport International Film Festival, the Nantucket Film Festival, the Provincetown International Film Festival, the Copenhagen International Film Festival, the Athens Film Festival, the London Film Festival, the Oslo International Film Festival, and the Deauville Film Festival, where Curran picked up the Grand Special Prize nomination. “We Don't Live Here Anymore” starred Mark Ruffalo, Laura Dern, Peter Krause and Naomi Watts, who also served as producer. Recalling how he got the four main stars, Curran stated, “Mark was first. I read the script then went to Sydney, Australia, and bumped into Jane Campion. She had just done a film with Mark [In the Cut, with Meg Ryan]. To make a long story short, she called and by the time I got back to America, he had read it and seen my other film [Praise, released in 1998]. He said he wanted to do it, which started the momentum that made other actors want to get onboard. At the same time, I was trying to convince Naomi to do it. I’ve known her for years from Sydney. She was sort of on the fence because she was doing ‘21 Grams’ and exhausted. When I met Laura it was instantaneous. Peter was the last one cast and by the time we had settled on that it was only a few weeks before shooting so we didn’t have a lot of rehearsal time. We just jumped into it.” In 2006, Curran directed “The Painted Veil,” starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts. Scripted by Ron Nyswaner and based on the W. Somerset Maugham novel of the same name, the drama, about a young English couple who move to China in the 1920s, was released in the U.S. on December 20, 2006, and in China on December 29, 2006, with worldwide earnings of over $26 million. “The Painted Veil” won a 2007 Golden Globe for Best Original Score, two Independent Spirit nominations, including Best Male Lead for Norton, and a National Broad of Review Award for Best Screenplay – Adapted, among other honors. Curran also served as an executive producer. Curran wrote the screenplay for “The Killer Inside Me,” the second film adaptation of the 1952 novel by Jim Thompson. Helmed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson, Casey Affleck, and Bill Pullman, the drama is set to be released in the U.S. in 2010. He will return to the director's chair for the biopic “The Beautiful and the Damned,” based on the lives of jazz icons Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and “Stone,” which was adapted from a play by Angus MacLachlan. Keira Knightley will star in the first and Robert De Niro and Edward Norton in the latter. Leonardo DiCaprio is rumored to be up for the role of Knightley's onscreen husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
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