Australian filmmaker and screenwriter Stephan Elliott was BOTD in 1964. Born in Sydney, he began working in the film industry in his teens. His debut feature film Frauds, starring Hugo Weaving and Phil Collins, premiered at the 1993 Cannes Festival. He hit international fame with his 1994 film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a road comedy about two drag queens (played by Weaving and Guy Pearce) and a trans woman (Terence Stamp) who travel through the Australian outback in a lavender tour bus. After a triumphant midnight screening at Cannes, it became an international hit, praised for unapologetically centring gay and trans characters, its filthy array of one-liners and pumping disco soundtrack. The film won multiple industry awards, including an Oscar for Lizzy Gardiner’s and Tim Chappel’s witty drag designs, and became a landmark for LGBTQ representation in cinema. A defanged but wildly popular karaoke musical version opened in 2007, scripted by Elliott, and has since toured around the world. His much-anticipated follow-up film Welcome to Woop Woop, a road comedy starring Johnathon Schaech, was released in 1997, but poorly received by critics and a notable box office failure. He received modest praise for Easy Virtue, his 2008 adaptation of a Noël Coward play starring Jessica Biel, Colin Firth and Kristin Scott-Thomas. His most recent film, Swinging Safari, starring Pearce and Kylie Minogue, was released in 2017. Elliott came out as gay in 2012 during an awards ceremony, surprising literally no one. He has been in a relationship with Will Bevolley since the late 1980s, entering into a civil partnership in 2008.