'My dreams came true': Oscar winner Sean Baker on finding success in his 50s

Sean Baker used leftover bits of film to shoot his debut feature, and tells aspiring filmmakers they will find a way if the creative will is there. (Supplied)

Growing up in New Jersey before the internet and multiplexes branched into art-house films, Anora filmmaker Sean Baker got his first taste of cinema like any American kid living in the suburbs.

"It was Spielberg and Lucas — mainstream Hollywood fair," Baker tells ABC Arts.

Mainlining magazines like Premier, Famous Monsters and Fangoria in his bedroom, Baker regularly frequented his local comic book shop.

Soon, he was cutting his teeth on his parents' Super 8 camera, then a VHS camcorder.

"I had the real prestigious title of 'AV guy' at high school," he says, grinning.

Baker, now 55, moved to Manhattan to study film at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, where his cinematic tastes quickly broadened.

"I went to NYU thinking I was going to make the next Robocop or Die Hard but it was also that time I was discovering alternative indie cinema," he recalls.

"Sundance was getting a little bit of a pop, and we were hearing about Spike Lee and Jim Jarmusch," Baker says.

"Then it was the 90s, with Soderberg, Hal Hartley and Tarantino. I was in my freshman year, surrounded by repertory houses and art-house theatres, so my focus started to change, right there."

Appearing at the Sydney Town Hall in conversation with Alexei Toliopoulos as a headliner of this year's Vivid festival, Baker is now a household name.

He is the only* person to score four Oscars for one film in one night, for 2024's Mikey Madison-led, sex worker-positive rocky romance, Anora, scooping Best Picture (as producer, alongside his partner, Samatha Quan, and their regular collaborator, Alex Coco), Best Directing, Best Screenplay and Best Editing.

Baker is also one of only four filmmakers to claim the top Academy Award after winning the Cannes Film Festival's prestigious Palme d'Or.

Baker won four Oscars for Anora at the 2025 Academy Awards. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images)

Baker's debut feature, 2000's Four Letter Words — featuring a cameo from Anora star Karren Karagulian, who has appeared in almost all his films — was shot on 'short ends' of 35mm, the stuff left over from other movies.

"Actors would be a quarter of the way through a scene before it would run out," Baker chuckles.

While Baker is a fan of shooting on film, he's made movies any way possible.

Inspired by the pared-back Dogme 95 movement, co-founded by Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, Baker shot 2004's immigrant tale, Take Out, co-written and direct