Simon Wincer

Wincer was born in Sydney in 1943. He attended Cranbrook School from 1950 to 1961. On leaving school he worked as a stagehand at HSV Channel 7, which his cousin Eric Pearce was a presenter. He gradually worked his way up to floor manager, then fill-in director. He also spent several years in London, England, where he studied drama and directed theatre.

Wincer began his television directing career on dramas like Matlock Police, Ryan, and Homicide. By the 1980s he had directed over 200 hours of television. He made his feature directorial debut with 1979's thriller Snapshot. He followed this with 1980's Harlequin, a modern-day retelling of the Rasputin story set in the world of Washington D.C. politics. The film earned him his first AACTA/AFI Award nomination for Best Direction, and he was nominated again for his next film, Phar Lap. Wincer subsequently directed the American sci-fi film D.A.R.Y.L. (1985) and the Australian World War I drama The Lighthorsemen (1987). His work on the latter helped him secure the job directing Lonesome Dove, an 4-part-miniseries for CBS, based on the novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry. The series was a considerable commercial and critical success, and Wincer won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series. In 2008, he directed the prequel miniseries Comanche Moon. His subsequent film directing credits have included the Tom Selleck-starring Western Quigley Down Under (1990), the buddy action-comedy Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991), the family film Free Willy (1993), the superhero film The Phantom (1996), the IMAX film The Young Black Stallion (2003), and the Damien Oliver biopic The Cup (2011).

Wincer is a supporter of the KIDS Foundation of Australia.