Phillip Noyce: Biography

Australian Phillip Noyce was "movie crazy" from an early age, experimenting with an 8mm camera as a teen and producing an independent short, Better to Reign in Hell, before graduating from high school. He entered the University of Sydney's law school, quit to play amateur rugby, then re-enrolled in the University's fine arts department. Noyce continued turning out short documentaries on the more offbeat aspects of Australian life and also ran the University's film society before being accepted at the fledgling Australian Film and Television School in 1972. Two years later, he won the Sydney Film Festival's Rouben Mamoulien award for his documentary Castor and Pollux. With God Knows Why, But It Works, a 1975 docudrama about medical care among the Aborigines, Noyce became a professional filmmaker. His first feature, 1977's Backroads (which he also produced and wrote), expanded on certain race-relations themes explored in God Knows Why etc. Newsfront (1978), a paean to pioneering Australian newsreel cameramen, was Noyce's final nonfiction project. The director's first international success was the minimalist melodrama Dead Calm (1989), which, despite an idiotic slasher-movie ending, was potent enough to gain Noyce entry into Hollywood. His first American film, an adaptation of Tom Clancy's technothriller Patriot Games (1992), showed he knew how to take charge of a big-budget, big-star project. Alas, Noyce's next effort, Sliver (1993) was a misfire Sharon Stone vehicle plagued by in-production indecision and a surprising lack of genuine suspense. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide