Dion Beebe won the 2005 Academy Award®, as well as BAFTA, Australian Film Institute (AFI) and American Society of Cinematographer (ASC) Awards for his work on Rob Marshall's drama "Memoirs of a Geisha." The film marked Beebe's second collaboration with filmmaker Marshall, following their work on the director's Best Picture Oscar® winner, "Chicago," for which Beebe scored his first Oscar® and BAFTA Award nominations. He collaborated with Marshall again on the lavish film musical "Nine," earning another ASC Award nomination.
Born in Brisbane, Australia, Beebe moved with his family at age five to Cape Town, South Africa. He first studied at Pretoria Technical College for a year before moving back to Australia to enroll in the Australian Film, Television and Radio School—the only full-time cinematography student at the time—where he won an AFI Award and an Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS) Golden Tripod honor for two of his student films.
After graduation, Beebe honed his craft shooting short films, TV commercials and directing and shooting music videos. His first feature credit as a cinematographer came on the 1992 drama "Crush." He compiled another half-dozen documentary and feature credits over the next five years, winning a Golden Tripod Award from the ACS for "Down Rusty Down" in 1997. He won two more ACS honors, for John Curran's drama "Praise" in 1998, for which he also garnered award nominations from the AFI and Film Critics Circle of Australia (FCCA), and Jane Campion's 2003 mystery "In the Cut." In addition, he earned AFI and FCCA Award nominations for the 1996 Aussie feature "What I Have Written" and another FCCA Award nomination for "The Goddess of 1967."
Beebe's first U.S. film credit was on Mira Nair's Showtime drama "My Own Country." Beebe went on to collaborate twice with director Michael Mann, first on "Collateral," for which he shared BAFTA and ASC Award nominations with Paul Cameron, and then on "Miami Vice." His other credits encompass both features and documentaries and include Unjoo Moon's Tony Bennett documentary "The Zen of Bennett"; Martin Campbell's "Green Lantern"; Brad Silberling's "Land of the Lost"; Gavin Hood's "Rendition"; the musical documentary "I'm Only Looking: The Best of INXS"; "Equilibrium"; Gillian Armstrong's "Charlotte Gray"; "Forever Lulu"; and "Holy Smoke," which marked his first collaboration with Campion. In addition, he lensed Rob Marshall's 2006 TV concert tribute "Tony Bennett: An American Classic."
Warner Bros.
