Jeremy James Wood was born in New Zealand in 1974. His father Peter Wood is a well known jazz musician in the New Zealand jazz circuit—a master of jazz vibraphone, piano and percussion. Rubina is Jeremy's mother, a source of wisdom and support. Jeremy's brother Kirby Wood is a brilliant musician and composer—composing and recording all music for Jeremy's films and is a real inspiration to Jeremy's works. So is his father's music.
Jeremy attended Michael Park, a Rudolf Steiner school, where he was nurtured in music, acting, art and 'out-of-the-box' thinking.
In 1991 He started playing drums in his father's bands when he was 16 years old, travelling around the circuit, and even playing in Vanuatu twice in two years. He got to play in places and with master musicians that most young musicians could only dream of. Peter, Kirby and Jeremy played as a family and made many recordings together—and still do.
In 1994 he attended the Performing Arts School in Auckland, going onto the professional acting course at Unitec in 1995-1996 along with fellow classmate Daniel Gillies.
Acting in the professional arena in Auckland was great for Jeremy, but by 1998 he'd set his sights on leaving for Australia. Landing in Sydney, Jeremy set about working on his craft as an actor and also in an area he'd wanted to explore—filmmaking. Having made two shorts at acting school, Jeremy went on to make two shorts in Sydney before moving to Melbourne around 2001.
Acting hadn't worked out so he'd had to support himself in other areas. But he was still writing, directing and producing films. In 2003 he attended the
Footscray City College Film & TV school where he made 3 shorts.
After this he went onto make many more films—working toward mastering the art of filmmaking—and later went on to RMIT in Melbourne for more training in film and the digital screen arts.
