Kathryn Ann Bigelow (born November 27, 1951) is an American film director. With The Hurt Locker, Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director, the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing, the BAFTA Award for Best Direction, and the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Director.
In April 2010, Kathryn Bigelow was named to the Time 100 list of most influential people of the year.
Bigelow was born in San Carlos, California, United States, the only child of a paint factory manager and a librarian. Her early creative endeavors were as a student of painting. She enrolled at San Francisco Art Institute in the fall of 1970 and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in December 1972. While enrolled at SFAI, she was accepted into the Whitney Museum of American Art‘s Independent Study scholarship program in New York City.
Kathryn Bigelow entered the graduate film program at Columbia University, where she studied theory and criticism and earned her master’s degree. Her professors included Vito Acconci, Sylvère Lotringer and Susan Sontag, and she worked with the Art & Language collective and noted conceptualist Lawrence Weiner. She also taught at the California Institute of the Arts.
Filmography
2012 Zero Dark Thirty
2011 The Miraculous Year
2008 The Hurt Locker
2007 Mission Zero (short)
2002 K-19: The Widowmaker
2000 The Weight of Water
1995 Strange Days
1991 Point Break
1989 Blue Steel
1989 New Order: Substance
1987 Near Dark
1982 The Loveless
1978 The Set-Up (short)