Kathryn Bigelow

 
Born on November 27, 1951, in San Carlos, California, Kathryn Bigelow is a popular filmmaker known for her incredible visuals and heart-pounding action sequences. In 1979, Bigelow moved from short to feature-length films. In 1981, she created The Loveless. She attracted more notice for her next effort, Near Dark. Her next project was 1991's Point Break. After that, she tried her hand at television, directing the miniseries Wild Palms. She co-created the movie The Hurt Locker (2008), for which won an Academy Award for best director—becoming the first woman to receive this honor—and directed Zero Dark Thirty in 2012.
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 Off-track Betting building, literally in an old bank vault, where she made art and waited to be critiqued by people like Richard Serra, Robert Rauschenberg and Susan Sontag. Later she earned a scholarship to study film at Columbia University School of Arts, graduating in 1979. 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.