Roger Lindsey Donaldson (born 15 November 1945) is an Australian-born
New Zealand film director, producer and writer whose films include the 1981 relationship drama ''
Smash Palace'', and a run of titles shot in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
, including the
Kevin Costner
Kevin Michael Costner (born January 18, 1955) is an American actor, producer, film director and musician. He has received various accolades, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Screen Actor ...
films ''
No Way Out'' (1987) and ''
Thirteen Days'' (2000), and the 1997
disaster film ''
Dante's Peak''. He has worked twice each with actors
Kevin Costner
Kevin Michael Costner (born January 18, 1955) is an American actor, producer, film director and musician. He has received various accolades, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Screen Actor ...
,
Pierce Brosnan,
Anthony Hopkins and
Michael Madsen
Michael Søren Madsen (born September 25, 1957) is an American actor. He has starred in many films and television series, frequently collaborating with director Quentin Tarantino, most famously in the latter's debut film '' Reservoir Dogs'' (1 ...
. Also worked with actors
Tom Cruise,
Liam Neeson
William John Neeson (born 7 June 1952) is an actor from Northern Ireland. He has received several accolades, including nominations for an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and two Tony Awards. In 2020, he was placed 7th on ''The I ...
,
Daniel Day-Lewis
Sir Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis (born 29 April 1957) is an English retired actor. Often described as one of the preeminent actors of his generation, he received numerous accolades throughout his career which spanned over four decades, incl ...
,
Bruce Greenwood
Stuart Bruce Greenwood (born August 12, 1956) is a Canadian actor and producer. He is known for his role as the American president John F. Kennedy in '' Thirteen Days,'' for which he won the Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion ...
,
Dexter Fletcher,
Bernard Hill,
Laurence Olivier,
Edward Fox,
Al Pacino and many more.
Life and career
Donaldson was born in
Ballarat,
Victoria
Victoria most commonly refers to:
* Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia
* Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada
* Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory
* Victoria, Seychelle ...
, Australia where he attended
Ballarat High School. At 20, in 1965 he emigrated to
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
, where he established a small
still photography business and began making advertisements. Donaldson was also directing documentaries, including an adventure series featuring
Everest
Mount Everest (; Tibetic languages, Tibetan: ''Chomolungma'' ; ) is List of highest mountains on Earth, Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border ru ...
-conquering New Zealander
Sir Edmund Hillary
Sir Edmund Percival Hillary (20 July 1919 – 11 January 2008) was a New Zealand mountaineering, mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropy, philanthropist. On 29 May 1953, Hillary and Sherpa people, Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became th ...
, and his first ventures into drama. Donaldson and actor/director
Ian Mune
Ian Barry Mune (born 1941) is a New Zealand character actor, director, and screenwriter. His screen acting career spans four decades and more than 50 roles. His work as a film director includes hit comedy ''Came a Hot Friday'', an adaptation of c ...
collaborated on a number of projects for television, including anthology series ''Winners and Losers'', based on short stories by New Zealand authors.
In 1976, Donaldson directed and produced his first feature ''
Sleeping Dogs''. The film starred Mune and
Sam Neill as two men fighting for their lives in a totalitarian New Zealand. He followed it with ''
Smash Palace'', starring
Bruno Lawrence as a man who kidnaps his daughter after his marriage disintegrates.
Donaldson's international break came when producer
Dino de Laurentiis
Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis (; 8 August 1919 – 10 November 2010) was an Italian-American film producer. Along with Carlo Ponti, he was one of the producers who brought Italian cinema to the international scene at the end of World War II. He ...
invited him to direct a version of ''Mutiny on the Bounty'', after ''
Lawrence of Arabia'' director
David Lean left the project. The film, released as ''
The Bounty'', starred
Anthony Hopkins as
William Bligh
Vice-Admiral William Bligh (9 September 1754 – 7 December 1817) was an officer of the Royal Navy and a colonial administrator. The mutiny on the HMS ''Bounty'' occurred in 1789 when the ship was under his command; after being set adrift i ...
and
Mel Gibson as mutineer
Fletcher Christian
Fletcher Christian (25 September 1764 – 20 September 1793) was master's mate on board HMS ''Bounty'' during Lieutenant William Bligh's voyage to Tahiti during 1787–1789 for breadfruit plants. In the mutiny on the ''Bounty'', Christian se ...
. Donaldson was nominated for a
Golden Palm at the 1984
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...
for this film.
Donaldson went on to direct many popular and successful movies, including his breakthrough American hit
thriller ''
No Way Out'' (starring
Kevin Costner
Kevin Michael Costner (born January 18, 1955) is an American actor, producer, film director and musician. He has received various accolades, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Screen Actor ...
and
Gene Hackman), barmen romp ''
Cocktail'' (starring
Bryan Brown
Bryan Neathway Brown AM (born 23 June 1947) is an Australian actor. He has performed in over eighty film and television projects since the late 1970s, both in his native Australia and abroad. Notable films include '' Breaker Morant'' (1980), ...
and
Tom Cruise), volcano disaster movie ''
Dante's Peak'' (starring
Pierce Brosnan and
Linda Hamilton
Linda Carroll Hamilton (born September 26, 1956) is an American actress. She played Sarah Connor in the '' Terminator'' film series and Catherine Chandler in the television series ''Beauty and the Beast'' (1987–1990), for which she was nomina ...
), and ''
Thirteen Days'' (starring
Kevin Costner
Kevin Michael Costner (born January 18, 1955) is an American actor, producer, film director and musician. He has received various accolades, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Screen Actor ...
), an account of the
Cuban Missile Crisis. He also directed science fiction tale ''
Species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
'', and in 2003, the
Al Pacino and
Colin Farrell
Colin James Farrell (; born 31 May 1976) is an Irish actor. A leading man in projects across various genres in both blockbuster and independent films since the 2000s, he has received numerous accolades including a Golden Globe Award. ''The ...
film ''
The Recruit''. He also wrote and directed ''
The World's Fastest Indian
''The World's Fastest Indian'' is a 2005 New Zealand biographical sports drama film based on the Invercargill, New Zealand speed bike racer Burt Munro and his highly modified 1920 Indian Scout motorcycle. Munro set numerous land speed records ...
'' starring
Anthony Hopkins and depicting
Burt Munro
Herbert James "Burt" Munro (''Bert'' in his youth; 25 March 1899 – 6 January 1978) was a motorcycle racer from New Zealand, famous for setting an under-1,000 cc world record, at Bonneville, on the 26th of August 1967. This record still st ...
's successful attempts at motorcycle speed records at
Bonneville Salt Flats
The Bonneville Salt Flats are a densely packed salt pan in Tooele County in northwestern Utah. A remnant of the Pleistocene Lake Bonneville, it is the largest of many salt flats west of the Great Salt Lake. It is public land managed by the Bur ...
in the 1950's. The film was released in 2005.
His son
Chris
Chris is a short form of various names including Christopher, Christian, Christina, Christine, and Christos. Chris is also used as a name in its own right, however it is not as common.
People with the given name
*Chris Abani (born 1966), Nige ...
has represented New Zealand at
Olympic level in athletics in the 100 m and 200 m events.
In the
2018 Queen's Birthday Honours
The 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours are appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries. The Birthday Honours are awarded as p ...
, Donaldson was appointed an
Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to film.
Filmography
Film
Documentary film
Short film
* ''Lawyers'' (2010)
Television
TV series
TV movies
* ''Survey'' (1972)
* ''Jocko'' (1981)
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Donaldson, Roger
1945 births
Australian emigrants to New Zealand
Living people
New Zealand film directors
Officers of the New Zealand Order of Merit
People educated at Ballarat High School
Science fiction film directors