Biography

Did not direct her first film until she was 43 years old.

First writer to interview Sex Pistols for an American publication.

Helped start the first punk magazine Punk.

Former occupation as a rock journalist.

Oxford educated

All women's history is hidden to some degree.

Certainly, I've always been attracted to that. Punk rock, when I was a part of it, was called 'the underground.' There was something very attractive in all the hidden places. The hidden histories.

If I did a big Hollywood movie, I wouldn't be able to control casting.

There's an institutional reluctance - crews are mostly male - but there's also that [personal] reticence.... I went to a film class to talk, and it was half men and half women. But the women didn't talk. So finally, halfway through, I said, 'Why aren't the women talking? Why are only the boys talking?' ... But it's not only hard for women. It's also hard for anybody trying to do stories off the beaten track. I've made three films so far, but I made the films I wanted to make, how I wanted to make them.

Women in the 20th century are astonishing, how much their lives changed. Today, people think who you are is all about internal psychology and what your parents are like. But it's also about your era and where you were born and your class, too, which American films hardly address at all.