Kathryn Bigelow Net Worth

Kathryn Bigelow's 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.
• [on 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.
• I always want to make films. I think of it as a great opportunity to comment on the world in which we live. Perhaps just because I just came off The Hurt Locker (2008) and I'm thinking of the war and I think it's a deplorable situation. It's a great medium in which to speak about that. This is a war that cannot be won, why are we sending troops over there? Well, the only medium I have, the only opportunity I have, is to use film. There will always be issues I care about.
• You cast not for marquee value but for performance and talent. The right actor for the part. Anything else is a compromise.
• [on The Hurt Locker (2008)] War's dirty little secret is that some men love it. I'm trying to unpack why, to look at what it means to be a hero in the context of 21st-century combat.

Interesting Facts about Kathryn Bigelow

1. Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 54th Berlin International Film Festival in 2003.
2. Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 55th Venice International Film Festival in 1998.
3. Member of the 'Dramatic' jury at the Sundance International Film Festival in 1990.
4. Received a Dallas Star award from the AFI Dallas film festival in 2009.
5. The American Cinematheque honored Bigelow by showing all of her films at The Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, June 5-7 2009.
6. From July 1-13, 2009, the Harvard Film Archive hosted a retrospective of her career, showing all of her films from The Loveless (1981) to The Hurt Locker (2008). The retrospective was titled "Take It To The Edge: The Films Of Kathryn Bigelow" and featured a Q&A session with her.
7. Ex-sister-in-law of Mike Cameron.
8. The 2010 Santa Barbara International Film Festival hosted "A Celebration of Kathryn Bigelow", which featured a retrospective of her work.
9. First woman to win the Directors Guild of America Award for directing a feature film (for The Hurt Locker (2008)).
10. Taught at the California Institute of the Arts.
11. In 2010, she became the first woman in Oscar history to win the Best Director award.
12. First woman to win a BAFTA Award for Best Director.
13. When she sent an unfinished short feature to Columbia University's film school, director Milos Forman--then serving as a professor there--found it impressive enough to offer her a scholarship. She graduated from Columbia in 1979.
14. As of 2018 she was the fifth woman to be nominated for the Directing Academy Award. The other four were: Lina Wertmüller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola and Greta Gerwig. Bigelow ended up becoming the first woman to win the award.
15. Competed with ex-husband James Cameron for the Best Director Oscar in 2010. This marked the first time that (ex-) spouses were nominated alongside each other in this category. She went on to win the award--the first woman director to do so.
16. In 2010 she was named one of "Time" magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World.
17. She has works in the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection, including Near Dark (1987), a 1987 feature-length film, and her personal paper archive.
18. On March 7, 2010, at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, CA, her Best Director Oscar statuette for The Hurt Locker (2008) was presented to her by Barbra Streisand, the only woman ever to have won the Golden Globe for Best Director.
19. Hung out with Susan Sontag and Philip Glass when she first came to New York City in 1970. She and Glass even collaborated on a business venture where they bought old loft places in Soho and Tribeca, renovated them and then sold them. She says she was often the one who sanded the floors.
20. As of 2018 she has directed two actors to Academy Award-nominated performances: Jeremy Renner (Best Actor, The Hurt Locker (2008)), and Jessica Chastain (Best Actress, Zero Dark Thirty (2012)).