Catherine Hardwicke is an American
production designerIn film and television, a production designer is the person responsible for the overall look of a filmed event such as films, TV programs, music videos or adverts. Production designers have one of the key creative roles in the creation of motion pictures and television. Working directly with the...
, film writer and film director. Her works include the
independent filmAn independent film, or indie film, is a professional film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly or completely outside of the major film studio system. In addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies, independent films are also produced...
ThirteenThirteen is a 2003 American drama film directed by Catherine Hardwicke, and written by Hardwicke and Nikki Reed, the film's co-star. The film also stars Evan Rachel Wood and Holly Hunter. It is a semi-autobiographical film inspired by Reed's life at age 12 and 13 with Wood's character "Tracy" being...
, which she co-wrote with
Nikki ReedNicole Houston "Nikki" Reed is an American film and television actress, and screenwriter. She became known in 2003, after the release of the film Thirteen, for which she co-wrote the screenplay. Reed has since appeared in several films, including Lords of Dogtown and Mini's First Time...
, the film's co-star, the Biblically-themed
The Nativity StoryThe Nativity Story is a 2006 drama film based on the nativity of Jesus starring Keisha Castle-Hughes and Shohreh Aghdashloo. Filming began on May 1, 2006 in Matera, Italy and in Morocco. New Line Cinema released it on December 1, 2006 in the United States and one week later on December 8 in the...
, the vampire film
TwilightTwilight is a 2008 American romantic vampire film based on Stephenie Meyer's popular novel of the same name. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, the film stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. It is the first film in The Twilight Saga film series...
, and the werewolf film
Red Riding Hood. The opening weekend of
Twilight was the biggest opening ever for a female director.
Despite a popular misconception, Catherine is not related to actor Sir Cedric Hardwicke.
Early life
Hardwicke was born in
CameronCameron is a city in Milam County, Texas, United States. The population was 5,634 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Milam County.-Geography:Cameron is located at . It is situated at the junction of U.S...
, Texas, the daughter of Jamee Elberta (née Bennett) and John Benjamin Hardwicke. She grew up in
McAllenMcAllen is the largest city in Hidalgo County, Texas, United States. It is located at the southern tip of Texas in an area known as the Rio Grande Valley and is part of the . Its southern boundary is located about five miles from the U.S.–Mexico border and the Mexican city of Reynosa, the Rio...
, Texas, on the U.S.–Mexico border, where her family lived on a giant farm off the
Rio GrandeThe Rio Grande is a river that flows from southwestern Colorado in the United States to the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way it forms part of the Mexico – United States border. Its length varies as its course changes...
. "It was a wild life," she would recount. She graduated from
McAllen High SchoolMcAllen High School is one of three high schools serving the McAllen, Texas area as a part of the McAllen Independent School District. It houses over 2200 students from grades 9-12. The school originally opened in 1909 and moved to its current location at 2021 La Vista Avenue in 1963. The school...
, Texas, and was raised in the Presbyterian denomination. While at
UCLA film schoolThe UCLA School of Theatre, Film, and Television , is one of the twelve schools within UCLA. It is located in Los Angeles, California, USA, and is unique in that it combines all three of these aspects into a single school. The graduate programs are usually ranking within the top 3 nationally,...
during the 1980s, Hardwicke made an award-winning short,
Puppy Does the Gumbo. She has a brother named Jack, and a sister named Irene Hardwicke Olivieri, who is an artist.
She graduated from college with an architecture
degreeAn academic degree is a position and title within a college or university that is usually awarded in recognition of the recipient having either satisfactorily completed a prescribed course of study or having conducted a scholarly endeavour deemed worthy of his or her admission to the degree...
, and after her father bought a 20-acre real-estate complex, she designed the property’s 120 townhouses. Hardwicke began her career as an architect, but the work she was offered began to feel too cookie-cutter, so she fled to Hollywood, where she landed her first motion picture job as a
production designerIn film and television, a production designer is the person responsible for the overall look of a filmed event such as films, TV programs, music videos or adverts. Production designers have one of the key creative roles in the creation of motion pictures and television. Working directly with the...
on the skateboard cult favorite
Thrashin', directed by
David WintersDavid Winters is an English-born American dancer, choreographer, producer, director, screenwriter, and actor. Winters has participated in, directed and produced over 400 television series, specials, and motion pictures...
and starring
Josh BrolinJosh James Brolin is an American actor. He has acted in theater, film and television roles since 1985, and won acting awards for his roles in the films W., No Country for Old Men, Milk and True Grit.-Early life:...
.
Movie career
She spent most of the 1990s as a production designer, working on such films as
Tombstone (1993),
Tank GirlTank Girl is a British comic created by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin. Originally drawn by Jamie Hewlett, it has also been drawn by Rufus Dayglo, Ashley Wood, and Mike McMahon.The eponymous character Tank Girl drives a tank, which is also her home...
(1995),
2 Days in the Valley2 Days in the Valley is a 1996 film, directed by John Herzfeld. The film revolves around the events over 48 hours in the lives of a group of people who are drawn together by a murder. Several parallel storylines overlap one another in the film.-Plot:...
(1996),
The Newton BoysThe Newton Boys is a 1998 drama film based on the true story of the Newton Gang, a family of bank robbers from Uvalde, Texas. The film stars Matthew McConaughey, Skeet Ulrich, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Dwight Yoakam. It was filmed in Austin, Bartlett, New Braunfels, and San Antonio,...
(1998), and
Three Kings (1999). The following year, she collaborated with director/screenwriter
Cameron CroweCameron Bruce Crowe is an American screenwriter and film director. Before moving into the film industry, Crowe was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine, for which he still frequently writes....
and actor/producer
Tom CruiseThomas Cruise Mapother IV , better known as Tom Cruise, is an American film actor and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and he has won three Golden Globe Awards....
on
Vanilla SkyVanilla Sky is a 2001 American psychological thriller film directed, co-produced and co-written by Cameron Crowe. The film is an English-language remake of the 1997 Spanish movie Abre los ojos , the screenplay for which was written by Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil...
(2001). The latter two films are notable for their original use of color-manipulation techniques to complement the narrative. Hardwicke, who always wanted to make her own movies, stumbled onto that chance while trying to help troubled teen,
Nikki ReedNicole Houston "Nikki" Reed is an American film and television actress, and screenwriter. She became known in 2003, after the release of the film Thirteen, for which she co-wrote the screenplay. Reed has since appeared in several films, including Lords of Dogtown and Mini's First Time...
, a friend's daughter, who had fallen in with a bad crowd at school.
Hardwicke's first foray into film direction was with the award-winning
ThirteenThirteen is a 2003 American drama film directed by Catherine Hardwicke, and written by Hardwicke and Nikki Reed, the film's co-star. The film also stars Evan Rachel Wood and Holly Hunter. It is a semi-autobiographical film inspired by Reed's life at age 12 and 13 with Wood's character "Tracy" being...
. Hardwicke and fourteen-year-old
Nikki ReedNicole Houston "Nikki" Reed is an American film and television actress, and screenwriter. She became known in 2003, after the release of the film Thirteen, for which she co-wrote the screenplay. Reed has since appeared in several films, including Lords of Dogtown and Mini's First Time...
collaborated in writing a movie that would reflect Reed's teenage experiences. They completed the script in six days, during Christmas break.
Evan Rachel WoodEvan Rachel Wood is an American actress and singer. She began her acting career in the late 1990s, appearing in several television series, including American Gothic and Once and Again...
was contracted to star in the movie alongside Reed.
Thirteen earned Hardwicke the directing award at
SundanceThe Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
in 2003, establishing her as Hollywood’s hot new filmmaker at 47. She went on to direct
Lords of DogtownLords of Dogtown is a 2005 biographical film directed by Catherine Hardwicke, written by Stacy Peralta. The film is based on the story of "The Z-Boys", an influential group of skateboarders who revolutionized the sport...
(2005), a fictionalized account of skateboarding culture. The film is loosely based on the documentary
Dogtown and Z-BoysDogtown and Z-Boys is a 2001 documentary film directed by Stacy Peralta. Using a mix of film the Zephyr skateboard team shot in the 1970s by Craig Stecyk and more recent interviews, the documentary tells the story of a group of teenage surfer/skateboarders and their influence on the history of...
by
Stacy PeraltaStacy Peralta is an American director and entrepreneur. Peralta was previously a professional skateboarder and surfer with the professional skateboarding group, the Z-Boys.-Early life:...
, whom Hardwicke first met and worked with on the film
Thrashin'. In 2006, Hardwicke directed the biblical film
The Nativity StoryThe Nativity Story is a 2006 drama film based on the nativity of Jesus starring Keisha Castle-Hughes and Shohreh Aghdashloo. Filming began on May 1, 2006 in Matera, Italy and in Morocco. New Line Cinema released it on December 1, 2006 in the United States and one week later on December 8 in the...
for
New Line CinemaNew Line Cinema, often simply referred to as New Line, is an American film studio. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor, later becoming an independent film studio. It became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with larger sister studio Warner...
. The movie closed out with almost US$38 million domestically and added to that almost US$9 million in foreign gross, bringing it to a worldwide total of almost US$47 million on a reported US $35 million budget.
She became the most commercially successful female director in Hollywood, when in 2008 she directed
the film adaptationTwilight is a 2008 American romantic vampire film based on Stephenie Meyer's popular novel of the same name. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, the film stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. It is the first film in The Twilight Saga film series...
of
Stephenie MeyerStephenie Meyer is an American author known for her vampire romance series Twilight. The Twilight novels have gained worldwide recognition and sold over 100 million copies globally, with translations into 37 different languages...
's best-selling novel,
TwilightTwilight is a young-adult vampire-romance novel by author Stephenie Meyer. It is the first book of the Twilight series, and introduces seventeen-year-old Isabella "Bella" Swan, who moves from Phoenix, Arizona to Forks, Washington and finds her life in danger when she falls in love with a vampire,...
. The film is the first in a series produced by
Summit EntertainmentSummit Entertainment LLC is an independent film studio headquartered in Santa Monica, California with international offices in London.-History:...
based on Meyer's four-book series. Like the late John Hughes, who discovered the teenage actors that became the Brat Pack, Hardwicke has created many of this generation's tween idols:
Evan Rachel WoodEvan Rachel Wood is an American actress and singer. She began her acting career in the late 1990s, appearing in several television series, including American Gothic and Once and Again...
(
ThirteenThirteen is a 2003 American drama film directed by Catherine Hardwicke, and written by Hardwicke and Nikki Reed, the film's co-star. The film also stars Evan Rachel Wood and Holly Hunter. It is a semi-autobiographical film inspired by Reed's life at age 12 and 13 with Wood's character "Tracy" being...
),
Emile HirschEmile Davenport Hirsch is an American television and film actor. He began performing in the late 1990s, appearing in several television films and series, and became known as a film actor after roles in Lords of Dogtown, The Emperor's Club, The Girl Next Door, Alpha Dog, and Into the Wild. In...
(
Lords of DogtownLords of Dogtown is a 2005 biographical film directed by Catherine Hardwicke, written by Stacy Peralta. The film is based on the story of "The Z-Boys", an influential group of skateboarders who revolutionized the sport...
),
Kristen StewartKristen Jaymes Stewart is an American actress. She is best known for playing Bella Swan in The Twilight Saga. She has also starred in films including Panic Room , Zathura , In the Land of Women , The Messengers , Adventureland and The Runaways .- Early life :Stewart was born and raised in Los...
,
Robert PattinsonRobert Douglas Thomas Pattinson is an English actor, model, musician, and producer. Born and raised in London, Pattinson started out his career by playing the role of Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire...
, and
Taylor Lautner (
TwilightTwilight is a 2008 American romantic vampire film based on Stephenie Meyer's popular novel of the same name. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, the film stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. It is the first film in The Twilight Saga film series...
) all got their big breaks in her films. But unlike Hughes's comedic and melodramatic films, her movies are darker in story and tone. In 2009, she was awarded the Women in Film Dorothy Arzner Directors Award.
Amid rumors of a rocky relationship with Hardwicke,
Summit EntertainmentSummit Entertainment LLC is an independent film studio headquartered in Santa Monica, California with international offices in London.-History:...
announced that she would not direct the sequel,
New Moon. Despite
Twilights $400 million global success, Hardwicke left the franchise when it came to the sequel. She said it was her decision, despite a blog report that she was fired. "I couldn't even be fired, that's what's so funny," she says. "In my contract, I had the first right of refusal." She turned down the second film, she says, because the studio wanted to rush it out. "I do not regret it at all, thank the Lord," she says. "The truth is I liked the first book the best."
In 2011, Hardwicke directed
Red Riding Hood.
Subsequent reports of an agreement to direct the adaptation of Gayle Forman's
If I Stay, which Summit optioned prior to its publication, suggest that the relationship may not have deteriorated as much as reports indicated. Hardwicke will also be directing
Maximum Ride, a film adaptation based on the
book seriesMaximum Ride is a series of young adult science fiction and fantasy novels by American author James Patterson. The series chronicles the lives of six fugitive kids – Max, Fang, Iggy, Gasman, Nudge, and Angel – known collectively as the Flock...
by
James PattersonJames B. Patterson is an American author of thriller novels, largely known for his series about American psychologist Alex Cross...
, and is teaming up with actor
Emile HirschEmile Davenport Hirsch is an American television and film actor. He began performing in the late 1990s, appearing in several television films and series, and became known as a film actor after roles in Lords of Dogtown, The Emperor's Club, The Girl Next Door, Alpha Dog, and Into the Wild. In...
to create a modern-day, supernatural version of
HamletThe Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
.
Director
| Year | Title | Notes |
| 2003 |
ThirteenThirteen is a 2003 American drama film directed by Catherine Hardwicke, and written by Hardwicke and Nikki Reed, the film's co-star. The film also stars Evan Rachel Wood and Holly Hunter. It is a semi-autobiographical film inspired by Reed's life at age 12 and 13 with Wood's character "Tracy" being...
|
Also Writer
- Sundance Film Festival Dramatic Directing Award
- Deauville Film Festival Jury Special Prize
- Directors View Film Festival Dorothy Arzner Prize
- Locarno International Film Festival Silver Leopard Award
- Nantucket Film Festival Award for Best Feature Screenplay
- National Board of Review, USA Special Recognition Award
- Nominated-Bratislava International Film Festival for Grand Prix Award
- Nominated- Deauville Film Festival for Grand Special Prize
- Nominated- Gijon International Film Festival for Grand Prix Asturias
- Nominated- Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Feature
- Nominated- Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Screenplay
- Nominated- Locarno International Film Festival for Golden Leopard Award
- Nominated- Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards for Best Screenplay, Original
- Nominated- Satellite Awards for Best Director
- Nominated- Satellite Awards for Best Screenplay, Original
- Nominated- Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize(Dramatic)
- Nominated- Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Awards for Best Screenplay, Original
|
| 2005 |
Lords of DogtownLords of Dogtown is a 2005 biographical film directed by Catherine Hardwicke, written by Stacy Peralta. The film is based on the story of "The Z-Boys", an influential group of skateboarders who revolutionized the sport...
|
Nominated- Golden Trailer Awards for Best Drama
Nominated- Teen Choice Awards for Action Adventure |
| 2006 |
The Nativity StoryThe Nativity Story is a 2006 drama film based on the nativity of Jesus starring Keisha Castle-Hughes and Shohreh Aghdashloo. Filming began on May 1, 2006 in Matera, Italy and in Morocco. New Line Cinema released it on December 1, 2006 in the United States and one week later on December 8 in the...
|
also executive producer
Heartland Film Festival for Truly Moving Picture
MovieGuide Awards Epiphany Prize for Film |
| 2008 |
TwilightTwilight is a 2008 American romantic vampire film based on Stephenie Meyer's popular novel of the same name. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, the film stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. It is the first film in The Twilight Saga film series...
|
won the Young Hollywood Award |
| 2011 |
Red Riding Hood |
In Cinemas |
| 2013 |
Maximum Ride: The Angel ExperimentMaximum Ride: The Angel Experiment is the first book in the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson. The book was released in the US on April 11, 2005 and in the UK on July 4, 2005. The book is set in the near future and centers around the 'flock', a group of human-avian hybrids on the run from the...
|
filming |
External links