SPECIAL GUESTS & EVENTS

Catherine Hardwicke

Filmmaker

Hardwicke’s first film as a director (and co-writer) was the critically-acclaimed coming-of-age Thirteen, which won numerous awards in global film festivals, including the Director’s Award at Sundance, Golden Globe nominations for Holly Hunter and Evan Rachel Wood, and an Academy Award nomination for Hunter.  Hardwicke has since then become best known as the director of Twilight, which launched the blockbuster franchise and earned nearly $400 million at the global box office.

Hardwicke’s other credits include: Lords of Dogtown (Heath Ledger, Emile Hirsch), Miss You Already (Drew Barrymore, Toni Collette), Red Riding Hood (Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman), Miss Bala (Gina Rodriguez) and The Nativity Story (Oscar Isaac).  For television, she has directed episodes of This Is Us, Eye Witness, Low Winter Sun, Hell on Wheels, Reckless and the 14 part Quibi series Don’t Look Deeper (Don Cheadle, Emily Mortimer). 

Hardwicke previously worked as a Production Designer on films including Vanilla Sky, Three Kings, Tank Girl, and the classic western Tombstone. She holds an Architecture degree from UT Austin and did graduate work in animation at UCLA Film School. 

On the anthology film “Tell it Like a Woman”, Hardwicke wrote 2 segments – “Pepcy and Kim” (Jennifer Hudson) - directed by Taraji P. Henson, and “Elbows Deep” (Cara Delevingne, Marcia Gay Harden) – directed by Hardwicke.  The film screened at global film festivals, at the General Assembly for the United Nations, and received a 2022 Oscar nomination for best original song. 

Hardwicke also directed the music video for the 2016 Oscar-nominated song “Til it Happens to You” by Lady Gaga and Diane Warren. 

Hardwicke’s latest work includes the action/comedy Mafia Mamma, filmed in Rome (Toni Collette, Monica Bellucci), a  gritty family drama Prisoner’s Daughter (Kate Beckinsale, Brian Cox), which premiered at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival, Dreams in the Witchhouse (Rupert Grint, Ismael Cruz Cordova), inspired by a J.P. Lovecraft novella - for the Netflix anthology series Guillermo del Toro’s "Cabinet of Curiosities."  She recently directed for the acclaimed Hulu series, Under the Bridge, starring Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone on 2024.