Jane Campion
Jane Campion | |
|---|---|
| Spouse | Colin Englert (1992-) |
| Awards | Palme d'Or - Cannes Film Festival 1986 Peel (short film) 1993 The Piano Venice Silver Lion for the Grand Jury Prize 1990 An Angel at My Table |
Jane Campion (born 30 April 1954 in Wellington, New Zealand) is an Academy Award-winning film maker. She is one of the most internationally successful New Zealand directors, although most of her work has been made in or financed by other countries, principally Australia – where she now lives – and the U.S. Campion attended the Australian Film Television and Radio School early in its history, where she learned the craft that has resulted in a career that spans fourteen films as director, three as producer and eight as writer.
Biography
Campion was born in Wellington, New Zealand. She graduated in Anthropology from Victoria University of her birthtown in 1975 and with a painting major at the Sydney College of the Arts in 1979. She started at the movies in the early eighties at the Australian School of Film and Television.
Her first short film, Peel (1982) won the Palme D'Or at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival and other awards followed for the shorts Passionless Moments (1983) and Girls Own Story (1984). Sweetie (1989) was her feature debut, and won international awards. Further recognition followed with An Angel at my Table (1990), an autobiographical and psychological portrayal of the poet Janet Frame. International recognition followed with another Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1993 for The Piano, which won the best director award from the Australian Film Institute and an Oscar for best screenplay in 1994. At the 66th Academy Awards she was the second woman ever to be nominated best director.
Campion's work since that time has tended to polarize opinion. The Portrait of a Lady (1996), based on the Henry James novel, featured Nicole Kidman, John Malkovich, Barbara Hershey and Martin Donovan. Holy Smoke! (1999) teamed Campion again with Harvey Keitel, this time with Kate Winslet as the female lead. In the Cut (2003), an erotic thriller based on Susanna Moore's bestseller, provided Meg Ryan an opportunity to depart from her more familiar onscreen persona.
Campion was an executive producer for the 2006 documentary Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story.
She has a daughter named Alice.
Selected filmography
Director
- Sweetie (1989)
- An Angel at My Table (1990) — based on the autobiography of Janet Frame
- The Piano (1993)
- The Portrait of a Lady (1996) — based on the novel by Henry James
- Holy Smoke! (1999)
- In the Cut (2003) — based on the novel by Susanna Moore
- The Water Diary (2006)
- 8 (2008)
- Bright Star (2009)
Producer
- Soft Fruit (2000)
- Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story (2006)