About Kathryn Bigelow

Country of Birth

United States 

Industry

Entertainment 

Top achievements

Kathryn Bigelow is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, and artist. Her films include Near Dark, Point Break, Strange Days, K-19, The Widowmaker, The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, and Detroit. Bigelow’s action movies often feature leads who struggle with inner conflict and feature intense violence. Bigelow is the first female director to win an Academy Award for best director, and she’s on the 2010 Time 100 list of most influential people of the year.

Early life and education

Born as the only child of Gertrude and Ronald Bigelow in November 1951, Kathryn Bigelow attended Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, California. She then attended the San Francisco Art Institute, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1972. While studying at the Institute, Bigelow was accepted into an independent study program with the Whitney Museum of American Arts. 

Next, Bigelow earned a scholarship from Columbia University, where she entered the graduate film program and earned a master’s degree. She made the short movie The Set-Up while she was studying. The movie explored violence, a recurring theme in her projects. After graduating, Bigelow started working on The Loveless, a feature-length movie starring Willem Dafoe, who was unknown at the time. The film was released in 1981 and earned critical acclaim.

Early Career

In 1987 Bigelow released Near Dark, followed by Blue Steel in 1989 – her first significant studio project. Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, the movie featured graphic violence and had mixed reviews. Next, Bigelow worked on Point Break, starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. 

After several films that were not particularly successful, Bigelow produced The Hurt Locker independently, with which she made a massive comeback. 

Extreme Filming

Bigelow is known for going to extremes for her craft. While filming a skydiving scene for Point Break, she was in an airplane wearing a parachute, and during surfing scenes, she would paddle on a longboard or lean over a boat as she filmed. For Strange Days, she operated a crane that dropped a cameraman over the edge of a building. For The Hurt Locker, she filmed in temperatures up to 130 °F (54 °C.)

Achievements

Kathryn Bigelow is the first female director to win an Academy Award for Best Director with The Hurt Locker. She also achieved the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing and the BAFTA Award for Best Direction. She was the first female to win the Saturn Award for Best Director for Strange Days.

Additional facts

• Kathryn Bigelow was briefly married to Canadian filmmaker James Cameron, known for the Terminator movies and Avatar.
• Early in her life, Bigelow lived as an impoverished artist with Julian Schnabel, the painter. 
• She briefly joined forces with Philip Glass on a real-estate venture in which they renovated apartments to make a profit. 
• Although Strange Days was a commercial flop, it led to Kathryn Bigelow and her team developing a camera that approximates human vision, now widely regarded as an innovation in the movie industry.