Kathryn Bigelow -- 1st Hollywood's Best Female Director

Kathryn Bigelow, being the 1^st ever Hollywood FEMALE Director in the film/movie history to win Best Director Award, got me so interested ’bout her. That’s why I research ’bout her short biography to share with you all.

Personal Information

Real Name: Kathryn Ann Bigelow
Birthdate: 27^th November 1951
Birthplace: San Carlos, California
Occupation: Film Director
Spouse: James Cameron (1989–1991)
Height: 5 feet and 11 ½ inches

Mini Biography (early life and education)

Kathryn is an only child of the manager of the paint factory and a librarian. She is a very talented painter. She spent her 2 years at the San Francisco Arts Institute and at the age of 20, she won a scholarship to the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in New York.
Kathryn was given a studio in a former Offtrack Betting Building, literary in a vault, where she studied theory and criticism and earned her master’s degree. Her professor includes Vito Acconci and Susan Sontag. She later graduated from Columbia’s Film School.
She worked with noted conceptualist Lawrence Weiner and was also a member of the British avant-garde cultural group, Art and Language. She also taught at the California Institute of the Arts.

Filmography

• The Set-Up (1978) — her first short film which is a 20-minute deconstruction of violence in film
• The Loveless (1982) — a biker movie which she co-directed with Monty Montgomery
• Near Dark (1987) — which she co-scripted with Eric Red
• Blue Steel (1990) — again she co-wrote it with Eric Red
• Point Break (1991) — starred by Keanu Reeves and the late Patrick Swayze
• Strange Days (1995) — which was written and produce by her former spouse James Cameron
• The Weight of Water (2000) — is a portrait of 2 women trapped in suffocating relationships
• K-9: The Widowmaker (2002) — starring Harrison Ford
• The Hurt Locker (2009) — which is a six-time Academy Award-winning movie

Other Trivia

• She modeled for GAP advertisement
• She played the role of a newspaper editor in Lizzie Borden’ 1983 film Born in Flames
• Member of the jury at the Berlin International Film in 2003
• Member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1998
• Member of the dramatic jury at the Sundance Film Festival in 1990
• Received a Dallas Star Award from the AFI Dallas Film Festival in 2009
• The American Cinematheque honored her by showing all of her films at The Egyptian Theater in Hollywood on June 5–7, 2009
• From July 1–13, 2009, the Harvard Film Archive hosted a retrospective of her career, showing all her films and titled it “Take it to the Edge: The Films of Kathryn Bigelow”. It featured a Q&A session with her
• The 2010 Santa Barbara International Film Festival hosted “A Celebration of Kathryn Bigelow” which also featured a retrospective of her work
• The 4^th woman to received an Oscar nomination for Best Director and is 1^st woman to win Best Director at the Director’s Guild Awards

Personal Quote

“If there’s specific resistance to women in making movies, I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: 1) I can’t change my gender, and 2) I refused to stop making movies. It’s irrelevant who or what directed a movie, the important is that you either respond to it or you don’t. There should be more women directing; I think there’s just not the awareness that it’s really possible it is.”

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