Peter Weir (born August 21, 1944) is a retired Australian film director.
Early in his career as a director, Weir was a leading figure in the Australian New Wave cinema movement (1970–1990), with films such as the mystery drama Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), the supernatural thriller The Last Wave (1977) and the historical drama Gallipoli (1981). The climax of Weir’s early career was the $6 million multinational production The Year of Living Dangerously (1982).
After the success of The Year of Living Dangerously, Weir directed a diverse group of American and international films covering most genres–many of them major box office hits–including Academy Award-nominated films such as the thriller Witness (1985), the drama Dead Poets Society (1989), the romantic comedy Green Card (1990), the social science fiction comedy-drama The Truman Show (1998) and the epic historical drama Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). For his work on these five films, Weir personally accrued six Academy Award nominations as either a director, writer or producer.
Since 2003, Weir has made only one feature, the well-received The Way Back (2010), which failed at the box office. In 2022, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that it would give Weir an honorary Oscar in November of the same year at the Governors Awards.