Catherine Hardwicke
Catherine Hardwicke
Catherine HardwickeOctober 21, 1955) is an American film director, production designer and screenwriter. Her works include the Academy Award-nominated independent film Thirteen, which she co-wrote with Nikki Reed, the film's co-star, the Biblically-themed The Nativity Story, the vampire film Twilight, the werewolf film Red Riding Hood, and the classic skateboarding film Lords of Dogtown. The opening weekend of Twilight was the biggest opening ever for a female director...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth21 October 1955
CityCameron, TX
CountryUnited States of America
I've worked on really big budget movies as a designer - 'Vanilla Sky,' 'Three Kings;' I've been in that world, and you can just see people get nervous.
Some directors I worked with didn't even know how to read a blueprint, understand a plan.
Being in construction my whole life - I was trained as an architect - I always had to work with guys. And I always did my homework and then challenged them to figure it out faster than me. They don't want to be shown up by a woman.
I respect all the teenagers I work with and feel that everything they have to say is just as valuable as anything I have to say.
I had a bunch of other projects that I worked really hard on after 'Twilight,' and the magic just didn't hit.
Before 'Twilight' was greenlit, I had four projects at four studios. I worked super-hard on all of them, but 'Twilight' was greenlit first.
As a director, we work ridiculously hard on every detail, and we do everything to the billionth degree, and mostly people notice nothing.
That gets you access to double to pool of actors, funding, musicians, whatever you need,
I've had meetings where there were literally, like, 12 angry men in a room and me. And even when everyone shot me down, I somehow dug in one more time.
As you study vampire legend throughout history, it goes back to almost every culture. South Africa, Indonesia, crazy places have that legend and that idea of immortality.
When I read the 'Twilight' book, I didn't see it as fantasy. I saw it as a love story.
Everything is so aggressively marketed at every age: if you're not in Baby Gap, you're not cool. That's how everybody's grown up, so they don't even know it could be another way.
You have a big success, and it's still not easy to make a movie.
What does 'dating' mean? I don't know. I couldn't say.