Early Life and Career
Yahoo Serious was born in Cardiff, City of Lake Macquarie in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, Australia. He went to Glendale East Public School and Cardiff High School, then worked as a tire fitter to pay for his tuition at the National Art School in Sydney. After being expelled, Serious co-wrote, co-produced, and directed his first film at age 21, a documentary called Coaltown which explored the social and political history of coal mining. The following year, his television series Lifestyle won the Australian Penguin Award for Best Educational Documentary.
In 1988, Serious co-wrote, produced, and directed Young Einstein, an intentionally inaccurate movie portraying Albert Einstein as a young farmer in Tasmania who derives the formula E=mc² while trying to discover a means of creating beer bubbles, splitting the lager atom in the process. After leaving the apple isle for Sydney on the mainland to patent his discovery, he goes on to develop rock music and surfing, romances Marie Curie, and saves Paris from an atomic bomb. The movie was an international hit, propelling Serious to stardom.
In 1993, Serious released his next film, Reckless Kelly, a satire about a modern descendant of the notorious Australian bank robber Ned Kelly who also becomes a movie star in Hollywood. While Reckless Kelly was a hit in Australia, it failed outside of the country and ended Serious's bid for mainstream international popularity. In 2000, Yahoo Serious released his third film Mr. Accident, about the most accident-prone man in the world. Like Reckless Kelly, the film was not a commercial success.
Yahoo Serious received an honorary doctorate from the University of Newcastle in 1996.
Serious was also one of the guest stars at the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
He is also a director of The Kokoda Track Foundation, and has trekked the Kokoda Track a number of times. As of December 2008 he is working on his 4th feature, a war movie about the Kokoda Track campaign.
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