1. Gillian Armstrong is a Member of the Order of Australia.
27 Facts About Gillian Armstrong
1. 2.
Gillian Armstrong has won many film awards, including an AFI Best Director Award, has been nominated for numerous others, and is the holder of several honorary doctorates.
3.
Gillian May Armstrong was born on 18 December 1950 in Melbourne, Victoria.
4.
Gillian Armstrong was the middle child of a local real estate agent father and a primary school teacher mother who stopped outside work to rear a family.
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Gillian Armstrong grew up in the suburb of Vermont, and attended Vermont High School.
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Gillian Armstrong's father was a frustrated photographer who wasn't allowed to follow his dreams professionally, yet continued his practice as an amateur.
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When she first decided to go to art school, Gillian Armstrong didn't have a very firm grasp on what she wanted to do.
8.
Gillian Armstrong said that her parents were always very supportive of her hopes and dreams, which was not always true for women in the 1960s and 70s.
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Gillian Armstrong studied general art in her first year and then majored in film, spending four years at Swinburne Technical College from 1968, which had recently established the beginnings of the Swinburne Film and Television School within the Graphic Art School.
10.
Gillian Armstrong went overseas with the film, and then travelled around for 18 months.
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Gillian Armstrong started her studies before the Australian film industry had developed.
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Gillian Armstrong recalls that when new films were released, the actors sounded strange; for the first time their accents were Australian rather than American.
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Gillian Armstrong received six awards at the 1979 Australian Film Awards including Best Director.
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Gillian Armstrong has directed a number of rock music videos in the early 1980s, including 1984's "Bop Girl" by Pat Wilson, which featured Nicole Kidman.
15.
Gillian Armstrong was the first foreign woman to be approached by the American film company MGM to finance her direction of a big-budget feature, which became Mrs Soffel starring Mel Gibson and Diane Keaton.
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On returning to Australia, Gillian Armstrong continued to make both documentaries and feature films.
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Gillian Armstrong earned great recognition for High Tide and The Last Days of Chez Nous, for which she was nominated for Best Director at the 1987 and 1992 Australian Film Institute Awards.
18.
In 1994, Gillian Armstrong achieved her greatest Hollywood success with the adaptation of Little Women, starring Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon, Gabriel Byrne, Christian Bale, Claire Danes and Kirsten Dunst.
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Gillian Armstrong followed this success three years later with the film Oscar and Lucinda, starring Ralph Fiennes and a relatively unknown Cate Blanchett.
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Gillian Armstrong has voiced her desire to reach a wide audience in her interviews, one that includes both men and women of all nationalities.
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Gillian Armstrong has a distinctive style in her work that resists easy categorisation.
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Gillian Armstrong's films are described as mixing and intermingling genres in ways that recreate them as something vastly different than what they have been considered.
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Nevertheless, the films that Gillian Armstrong creates can be considered conventional films in their appeal to the audience.
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Gillian Armstrong's films possess sensitive and delicate cinematography, fluid editing, an evocative feel for setting and costume, and a commitment to solid character development and acting.
25.
Gillian Armstrong is a Member of the Order of Australia, "In recognition of service to the film industry".
26.
Gillian Armstrong has won many awards, including an AFI Best Director Award, and has been nominated for numerous other awards, including a Palme D'Or and two Golden Bear Awards.
27.
Gillian Armstrong has received multiple hdoctorates, including an honorary doctor of letters from University of Sydney, and an honorary doctorate from Swinburne University of Technology.