Chloé Zhao won an Oscar for Nomadland
Zhao just took home the Oscar for best directing at the 2021 Academy Awards, and we’re not surprised.
Chloé Zhao made history at the 2021 Golden Globes
Zhao shattered a glass ceiling for women and made history for the Asian community at the 2021 Golden Globes, taking home the award for Best Director for Nomadland. Zhao was the first woman to win Best Director at the Golden Globes since Barbra Streisandfor Yentl in 1984, as well as the first female Asian director to ever win the honor. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which rightfully has come under fire for a startling lack of diversity (there are no Black members currently), also made history for nominating three women for the title, with Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman and Regina King for One Night In Miami joining Zhao and fellow nominees David Fincher (Mank) and Aaron Sorkin (The Trial of the Chicago 7). Only eight women have been nominated for Best Director in 78 years: Streisand had a second nomination for The Prince of Tides; Kathryn Bigelow was nominated for The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty; Ava DuVernayearned a nod for Selma in 2015, Jane Campion for The Piano and Sofia Coppola for Lost In Translation. Additionally, Varietynotes that because Zhao not only directed but also wrote, edited and produced Nomadland, she is now the most-awarded filmmaker ever for a single awards season. And the season has only just started! Streisand congratulated Zhao for her groundbreaking win on Sunday:
Chloé Zhao grew up in China but lived and studied around the world
Zhao was born and raised in Beijing, but studied abroad. She attended boarding school in England and high school in Los Angeles, experiences that undoubtedly drew her to work examining and shedding light on different cultures and ways of life.
Chloé Zhao had a lot of odd jobs
Before studying and pursuing film, Zhao was a party promoter and bartender and worked briefly in real estate.
Spike Lee was one of Chloé Zhao’s professors
Zhao attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and studied under iconic director Spike Lee.
Chloé Zhao’s partner Joshua James Richards is also a filmmaker
Zhao met British-born cinematographer Joshua James Richards at NYU, and they’ve worked and lived together as a couple pretty much ever since. He gushed to Vulture, “She was gnarly and extreme—my idea of the collaborator I hoped to find at film school. Most people I was spending time with were sitting around talking about their projects. Chloé was doing them. And so I jumped on that train.” Richards and Zhao live in Ojai, Calif., with their pets, which include chickens and two pooches.
Chloé Zhao’s other movies
Voguecredited Zhao as essentially “reinventing the Western” with The Rider. The 2017 film, about a Lower Brule Sioux horse trainer who literally and figuratively gets back in the saddle following a devastating head injury, became a festival-circuit sensation. Like Nomadland, The Rider features mostly non-professional actors; the film’s lead, Brady Jandreau, inspired much of the script (he suffered the same head injury as his character, Brady Blackburn). He told Vogueof working with Zhao, “I’m a horse trainer and she’s an actor trainer. The fact that Chloé was willing to open herself up to our world made us willing to open us up to hers.” Prior to The Rider, Zhao filmed and released Songs My Brothers Taught Me. The movie, released in 2015, was shot on the same Pine Ridge Indian Reservation as The Rider and focuses on a Lakota boy weighing a move to Los Angeles with leaving his family and history behind. She explained that the setting inspires her: “I’ve always had a feeling for plains. I remember visiting Inner Mongolia as a kid and feeling something that I didn’t feel in Beijing.”
Chloé Zhao will helm Marvel’s Eternals
Zhao was tapped for Marvel’s Eternals, currently slated for a November 2021 release. The cast is particularly diverse on top of being stellar: Kit Harington, Kumail Nanjiani, Salma Hayek, Brian Tyree-Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Ma Dong-seok, Angelina Jolie and Barry Keoghan are among those set to star. Nanjiani recalled to Vultureof Zhao’s casting vision, “I was like, ‘Okay, so how do you see Kingo?’ She was like, ‘He’s you. I picked you because I wanted him to be you.’ That’s how she picked the entire cast. She wanted everybody to put pieces of themselves into their characters…You never see a movie with a cast that looks like the world this much, let alone big superheroes in a Marvel movie.” Zhao says that she referenced The Revenant (which earned its star Leonardo DiCaprio a long-deserved Best Actor Oscar) for Eternals, which will have a bit of a sci-fi vibe in addition to the usual superhero fare of the MCU. “I think this is where Marvel really took the risk that we knew we wanted to shoot on location, because by shooting wide-angle lenses on locations it’s going to affect how you do visual effects,” she said. “It’s going to affect how you do the action. There’s a lot that will feel and look differently. We shot mostly on location, but I love being on the stage, learning about the technology, ‘cause I grew up with manga. I always imagined I want to be a manga artist. So for me, I always imagined stuff that doesn’t exist.” Next: Mark Your Marvel Calendar! From Black Widow to Blade, Here’s Every Upcoming Marvel Movie
Chloé Zhao will direct Universal’s new Dracula
Zhao has been tapped to helm the next iteration of Dracula for Universal’s monster universe. While details of the actual movie remain largely under wraps for now, it’s rumored that Zhao will treat the film as a sci-fi Western. “I’ve always been fascinated by vampires and the concept of the Other they embody,” she said in a statement, adding that she’s “very excited…to reimagine such a beloved character.” Universal Pictures President Peter Cramer said of the project, “Chloé’s singular lens shines a light on stories of the overlooked and misunderstood. We are thrilled to be working with her as she reimagines one of the most iconic outsider characters ever created.” Next, see the moving moment when Chadwick Boseman’s widow, Taylor Simone Ledward, accepted his Golden Globe.
