Biography

Worked mainly as an editor for Martin Scorsese, who had tried for years to convince her to work for him. She was unable to work in Hollywood, however, because she couldn't get into the union. When Scorsese called to ask her to work on Raging Bull (1980), she again demurred because of lack of union membership. However, she believes that Al Pacino got her into the union. To this day, she does not know what influence was used to gain her union membership.

She met Martin Scorsese during a summer program at New York University, where she was taking an editing course. As she had some professional experience editing movies for late night television, she was brought in to help student director Scorsese with problems on his film.

Martin Scorsese introduced her to her husband, Michael Powell.

Describes her marriage to Michael Powell as a "blissfully happy union".

Besides being working partners, she and Martin Scorsese are also personal friends.

I think the women have a particular ability to work with strong directors. They can collaborate. Maybe there's less of an ego battle.

I'm not a person who believes in the great difference between women and men as editors. But I do think that quality is key. We're very good at organizing and discipline and patience, and patience is 50 per cent of editing. You have to keep banging away at something until you get it to work. I think women are maybe better at that.

People expect artists to be too normal, I think. I've been around enough of them now to see that they're very extraordinary human beings who behave differently than ordinary human beings. If they weren't as sensitive as they are they wouldn't be great artists. They are not the same as us. People should just learn to accept that.

For me, Raging Bull (1980) is like my baby. It was my first major feature film. It is pure gold - beautifully directed, incredibly well acted, wonderful sound effects - that being my first break in feature film, making it is like my firstborn.

From MTV on, the speed of editing has increased, and that is now entering into narrative editing. People are not relying on good shots to tell the story, and I don't think you can sustain that kind of cutting for the full length of a film.