Why Legendary Filmmaker Peter Weir Stopped Making Movies According to a High-Profile Actor

A Possible Reason Peter Weir Stopped Directing Films

Dead Poets Society star, Ethan Hawke, has revealed his opinion on why the great filmmaker Peter Weir stopped making pictures.

There’s no arguing that the shortlist of the greatest all-time movie directors includes Peter Weir. The four-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker has made some of the best, most memorable films of all-time. He stopped making movies, though, after 2010’s long forgotten but rather solid picture, The Way Back. Ethan Hawke recently revealed why he thinks the master craftsman, Weir, stopped directing.

One of Weir’s most acclaimed movies is 2003’s Academy Award-nominated, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, which starred Russell Crowe at the maximum height of his career. Hawke cites Crowe as a difficult actor to work with alongside Johnny Depp who was supposed to have been in the film adaptation, Shantaram, but it never actually worked out. Maybe these actors “broke” the Australian director, according to Hawke. Previously, Weir worked with more professionally “proper” performers like Harrison Ford and Gerard Depardieu in The Mosquito Coast (1986) and Green Card (1990).

Weir will be presented with an honorary Oscar from the 13th Governors Awards but he could have possibly won the Academy Award for Best Director for a movie from 1993 that got lost in the Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List shuffle. Weir made a movie that year called Fearless with Jeff Bridges, Isabella Rossellini and Rosie Perez. The film got lost in audience oblivion at the box-office earning just $6 million domestically and all hope went out the window for the movie to receive the accolades it so well deserved. Even the admittedly great performance in it by Perez got just a nomination (not a win) and the fantastic movie (mainly about two plane crash survivors) was quickly forgotten.

Dead Poets Society was another masterpiece which Weir directed back in 1989 that featured one of Robin Williams’ most legendary performances as an inspirational English teacher who becomes immersed in a tragedy at his school. That movie got all the Oscar nomination love and made money at the box-office but sadly didn’t get the proper respect (i.e. Academy Award wins) it deserved.

Talking about not getting the proper respect, Jim Carrey was snubbed for a Best Actor nod at the Oscars for his career-defining performance in another Weir directed gem, The Truman Show from 1998. When the movie didn’t get the love from the Academy Awards it deserved (nods for Carrey or Best Picture), many people in Hollywood (alongside movie fans) were shocked. Weir did secure a Best Director nod for the film, however. Oddly enough, Spielberg was back in the picture that year with the much loved Saving Private Ryan.

As you can tell, Hawke isn’t the only one with ideas why Weir could have left the limelight of Hollywood (I wonder if maybe he just got too little respect for such wonderful work) but we’ll never truly know exactly why The Way Back ended his directing career. Weir has left behind a terrific slate of movies that, if you haven’t seen them, should be deemed required viewing for sure.

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