Catherine Hardwicke

Catherine Hardwicke (birthname: Helen Catherine Hardwicke) belongs to the wave of women directors in Hollywood, emerging before and after the turn of the 21^st century, who have helmed the kinds of high-octane movies that used to be the exclusive domain of men. After making short films during her graduate film studies at the UCLA Film and Television School, Hardwicke took her training in architecture into the film production discipline of production design, serving as a production designer for such features as Tombstone (1993), Tank Girl (1995), The Newton Boys (1998), Three Kings (1999), Antitrust (2001) and Vanilla Sky (2001).

Hardwicke’s debut as a feature writer-director was the personal and more indie-oriented coming-of-age drama, Thirteen (2003), starring Evan Rachel Wood and Holly Hunter (Oscar-nominated for best supporting actress) and co-written with co-star Nikki Reed, premiering at the Sundance film festival where Hardwicke won the U.S. dramatic competition directing prize, and grossed $10 million (or five times costs).

Catherine Hardwicke next directed writer-skater Stacy Peralta’s autobiographical Lords of Dogtown (2005), a dramatic version of Peralta’s skating documentary, Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001), starring Emile Hirsch, John Robinson (as Peralta), Victor Rasuk, Heath Ledger, Michael Angarano, Reed, and Rebecca De Mornay. In a stark turn of material, Hardwicke was director and, for the first time, executive producer on the Biblical drama, The Nativity Story (2006), with Keisha Castle-Hughes, Oscar Isaac, and Hiam Abbass.

Hardwicke scored her biggest directorial assignment with the much-anticipated Twilight (2008), starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, and grossing a phenomenal $407 million based on a $37 million budget. Due to reported conflicts with producers, Hardwicke didn’t direct the lucrative four sequels to her original feature. Though grilled by critics, director (and executive producer) Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood (2011) solidified her reputation as a director of romantic horror, with Amanda Seyfried and Gary Oldman starring, and returning an $89 million global gross.

Catherine Hardwicke’s first feature as co-writer-producer-director was the erotic thriller, Plush (2013), with Emily Browning, Cam Gigandet, and Frances Fisher, but it proved a failure with critics and at the box office. Miss You Already (2015), starring Toni Collette and Drew Barrymore and based on screenwriter Morwenna Banks’ 2013 radio drama, was Hardwicke’s next movie as director, earning a premier slot at the Toronto film festival and grossing $8.1 million worldwide.

Hardwicke was then part of an unusual project as co-director—with Sam Raimi and Theodore Melfi—of the short film, The Black Ghiandola (2017), made for the Make a Film Foundation and co-starring Johnny Depp, Laura Dern, David Lynch, and J.K. Simmons. Catherine Hardwicke jumped into action-movie mode as director of Miss Bala (2019), the English-language remake of Gerardo Naranjo’s 2011 Mexican-produced thriller, starring Gina Rodriguez, but lost money (only $15.4 million global gross) and poorly compared to Naranjo’s original feature.

After serving as an executive producer on the challenged production, Don’t Worry Darling (2022), Hardwicke returned as director of writer Mark Bacci’s prison drama, Prisoner’s Daughter (2023), premiering at the Toronto Film Festival starring Kate Beckinsale, Brian Cox, and Ernie Hudson. In one of her few forays into comedy, Hardwicke reunited as a director with Collette for Mafia Mamma (2023), with Monica Bellucci, but scoring a poor 19% on Rotten Tomatoes.