Lisa Cholodenko

Lisa Cholodenko Photo

LISA CHOLODENKO

Date of Birth: June 5, 1964

Raised in Los Angeles, Lisa Cholodenko began her career in film in 1991 as an assistant editor, then moved to New York City in 1992 to study screenwriting and directing at Columbia University. While there, she made an award-winning lesbian-themed short film and began work on the screenplay of what would become her first feature length film in 1994, before graduating with her MFA. High Art (1998), about two women who discover a mutual attraction, was produced several years after she finished college. The film won a GLAAD Media award, as well as a screenwriting award for Cholodenko at the Sundance Film Festival.

Cholodenko took time out from feature films to direct several episodes of the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street, the HBO comedy Six Feet Under and ABC-TV's Push, Nevada. Cholodenko wrote and directed her second film, Laurel Canyon (2003), starring Frances McDormand and Christian Bale. She describes her films as being "about the complications of intimacy," and says, "The minutia of intimacy, the seduction, danger, confusion and relief in it, fascinate me. One way or another, I'll probably keep making movies about these things."

It was a few years before her next film, The Kids are All Right (2010) was released, about two lesbians (Julianne Moore, Annette Bening) whose children were fathered by artificial insemination and what happens when their father shows up in their lives.