Biography for
Kathryn Bigelow More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

27 November 1951, San Carlos, California, USA

Birth Name

Kathryn Ann Bigelow

Height

5' 11½" (1.82 m)

Mini Biography

A very talented painter, Kathryn spent two years at the San Francisco Art Institute. At 20, she won a scholarship to the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program. She was given a studio in a former Offtrack Betting building, literally in a vault, where she made art and waited to be criticized by people like Richard Serra, Robert Rauschenberg and Susan Sontag. She later graduated from Columbia's Film School. She was also a member of the British avant-garde cultural group, Art and Language. Kathryn is the only child of the manager of a paint factory and a librarian.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Home Skully

Spouse

James Cameron

(17 August 1989 - 1991) (divorced)

Trade Mark

Frequently casts Tom Sizemore

Often uses first person perspectives (Wire trip scenes in Strange Days (1995) and the chase scenes in Point Break (1991)).

Trivia

Directed the music video for the New Order song, "Touched by the Hand of God", which starred Bill Paxton.

Member of jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2003

Member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1998.

Was 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 Bigelow by showing all of her films at The Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, June 5-7 2009.

From July 1st to July 13th, 2009, the Harvard Film Archive hosted a retrospective of Bigelow's career, showing all of her films from 1982's The Loveless (1982) to 2008's The Hurt Locker (2008). The retrospective was titled "Take It To The Edge: The Films Of Kathryn Bigelow" and featured a Question and Answer session with Bigelow.

Ex-sister-in-law of Mike Cameron.

Personal Quotes

If there's specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: I can't change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies. It's irrelevant who or what directed a movie, the important thing 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.

[About her 1995 film, Strange Days (1995)] If you hold a mirror up to society, and you don't like what you see, you can't fault the mirror. It's a mirror. I think that on the eve of the millennium, a point in time only four years from now, the clock is ticking, the same social issues and racial tensions still exist, the environment still needs reexamination so you don't forget it when the lights come up. Strange Days (1995) is provocative. Without revealing too much, I would say that it feels like we are driving toward a highly chaotic, explosive, volatile, Armageddon-like ending. Obviously, the riot footage came out of the LA riots. I mean, I was there. I experienced that. I was part of the cleanup afterwards, so I was very aware of the environment. I mean, it really affected me. It was etched indelibly on my psyche. So, obviously, some of the imagery came from that. I don't like violence. I am very interested, however, in truth. And violence is a fact of our lives, a part of the social context in which we live. But other elements of the movie are love and hope and redemption. Our main character throws up after seeing this hideous experience. The toughest decision was not wanting to shy away from anything, trying to keep the truth of the moment, of the social environment. It's not that I condone violence. I don't. It's an indictment. I would say the film is cautionary, a wake-up call, and that I think is always valuable.

Browse biographies section by name

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z