Stephan Elliott

Few figures in the film business have had to repeatedly overcome such drastic hurdles as Australian writer-director Stephan Elliott. After spending his teenage years making over 900 wedding videos, Elliott was chosen from 2000 applicants to receive one of 12 slots at the prestigious Sydney Tech film school. Despite his financiers going into liquidation just as production was beginning, Elliott's 1991 feature debut "Frauds" attracted favorable notice at the Cannes Film Festival. The 1994 drag queen dramedy "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" made his name, instantly attracting a loyal cult and defining his reputation for years to come. While his 1997 bad taste comedy "Welcome to Woop Woop" was merely poorly received, the 1999 thriller "Eye Of The Beholder" was a true disaster: when financing collapsed halfway through production, Elliott paid for the remainder of the $35 million production himself. When the film flopped, Elliott lost his house and savings. Swearing off directing, he turned to skiing to console himself, only to nearly die in a 2004 accident in the French Alps that broke his back, legs and pelvis. After three years of rehab, Elliott attacked filmmaking with a renewed zest, adapting Noel Coward's play "Easy Virtue" in 2009 before returning to his native Australia for 2011's raucous wedding-gone-wrong comedy "A Few Best Men."