His early work includes the 1988 prison film Ghosts... of the Civil Dead, as well as music videos for bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Depeche Mode and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

His breakthrough film, the 2005 outback Western The Proposition, was written by Nick Cave and received widespread critical acclaim.

[1] He attended Sir John A. Macdonald Secondary School in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and was enrolled in its Special Art Program.

He was active with the McMaster University Film Board, most notably producing an animated short titled The Finger.

Back in Australia by the late 1970s, aged 18, Hillcoat studied film at the Swinburne University of Technology, in Melbourne.