Australians in Hollywood : Biographical Notes

Dean Semler
Dean Semler (b. 1943), cinematographer, trained as a TV news cameraman before making documentary and educational films for Film Australia. He was director of photography on the Australian films Hoodwink (1981), Mad Max 2 , and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) before going to Hollywood in 1988 to shoot Cocktail , starring Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown, and Young Guns. After returning to Australia to work on Phillip Noyce's Dead Calm (1988), Semler filmed Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves (1990), and became the first Australian to win the cinematography Oscar since 1950, when Robert Krasker won for black and white cinematography on The Third Man. Semler has since shot Costner's Waterworld (1995), The Bone Collector (1999), D-Tox (2002) and Bruce Almighty (2003), and has recently finished work on The Alamo in Texas.

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