- Born
- Jane Campion was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and now lives in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Having graduated with a BA in Anthropology from Victoria University of Wellington in 1975, and a BA, with a painting major, at Sydney College of the Arts in 1979, she began filmmaking in the early 1980s, attending the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS). Her first short film, Peel (1982) won the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1986. Her other short films include A Girl's Own Story (1984), Passionless Moments (1983), After Hours (1985) and the tele-feature 2 Friends (1986), all of which won Australian and international awards. She co-wrote and directed her first feature film, Sweetie (1989), which won the Georges Sadoul prize in 1989 for Best Foreign Film, as well as the LA Film Critics' New Generation Award in 1990, the American Independant Spirit Award for Best Foreign Feature, and the Australian Critics' Award for Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress. She followed this with An Angel at My Table (1990), a dramatization based on the autobiographies of Janet Frame which won some seven prizes, including the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1990. It was also awarded prizes at the Toronto and Berlin Film Festivals, again winning the American Independent Spirit Award, and was voted the most popular film at the 1990 Sydney Film Festival. The Piano (1993) won the Palme D'Or at Cannes, making her the first woman ever to win the prestigious award. She also captured an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay at the 1993 Oscars, while also being nominated for Best Director.
- IMDb mini biography by: Jennifer Harrison
- SpouseColin Englert(1992 - 2001) (divorced, 2 children)
- Children
- Parents
- RelativesAnna Campion(Sibling)
- Became the second woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, with The Piano (1993). The first being Lina Wertmüller for Seven Beauties (1975). Campion would later become the first woman to be nominated for Best Director twice, with The Power of the Dog (2021).
- First woman to have been nominated twice in the Best Director category, and the third woman after Chloé Zhao and Kathryn Bigelow to actually win in that category.
- Has directed seven actors in Oscar nominated performances: Holly Hunter, Anna Paquin, Barbara Hershey, Kirsten Dunst, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons. Hunter and Paquin won Oscars for their performances in The Piano (1993).
- Son, Jasper, born who died 12 days later.
- Was part of the jury of the 2007 Venice Film Festival.
- I think that the romantic impulse is in all of us and that sometimes we live it for a short time, but it's not part of a sensible way of living. It's a heroic path and it generally ends dangerously. I treasure it in the sense that I believe it's a path of great courage. It can also be the path of the foolhardy and the compulsive.
- But short films are not inferior, just different. I think the short gives a freedom to film-makers. What's appealing is that you don't have as much responsibility for storytelling and plot. They can be more like a portrait, or a poem. The great thing is that almost everyone ends up doing something creative with them, even those directors who then go on to make quite boring features.
- You know, sex is actually not so original as the way people love or the stories behind each relationship, which is what you remember. Sex is sex in the end.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content
