Director, writer and producer, Kimberly Peirce was born on September 8, 1967 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA. She graduated from Miami Sunset High School in Miami, Florida. She has a B.A. in English and Japanese literature from University of Chicago and an M.F.A. in film from Columbia University. She graduated from Sundance Institute’s Writing, Directing And Producing Labs. She also lived in Japan for two years and worked as a photographer, and has written magazine articles about film. She had considered directing Memoirs of a Geisha (2005).
Kimberly Peirce is one of the 105 people invited to join Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS ) in 2008.
She is a director and writer, known for BOYS DON’T CRY (1999) starring Hilary Swank, Chloë Sevingy, Peter Sarsgaard. This film earned numerous honors including the Best Actress Oscar and Golden Globe for Hilary Swank, and Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for co-star Chloe Sevigny. Swank also took home Independent Spirit, NY and LA Film Critics, and National Board of Review Awards. Sevigny won the Independent Spirit Award and LA Film Critics awards for Best Supporting Actress. Peirce won honors as Best Debut Director from the National Board of Review and the Boston Society of Film Critics. The film received the Best Film International Critics prize at the London and Stockholm Film Festivals, the Satyajit Ray Award, and was named “Best American Feature” by Janet Maslin.
Earlier on she co-wrote and directed STOP-LOSS (2008) starring Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Abbie Cornish, Ryan and Phillipe), a topical and emotionally penetrating drama inspired by real-life stories of American soldiers, including her brother, fighting in Iraq.
She is a longtime friend of Brian De Palma, the original director of CARRIE (1976) and she directed a masterful remake of CARRIE (2013) starring Julianne Moore, Chloë Moretz, Judy Greer, Portia Doubleday, and introducing Ansel Elgort.
Kimberly spent years developing the film, “Silent Star”, a story about the murder of silent film director and actor William Desmond Taylor, one of early Hollywood’s infamous scandals. By the end of 2003, Peirce had the film cast with Annette Bening, Hugh Jackman and Ben Kingsley, but the studios offered her only $20 million to make the film that had a budget of $30 million, so the film is yet to me made.
Kimberly has also directed numerous acclaimed cable television shows including AMERICAN CRIME, TURN, HALT AND CATCH FIRE, MANHATTAN, SIX (for which she won an Women’s Image Award), I LOVE DICK, THE L WORD, DEAR WHITE PEOPLE, P-VALLEY, and the second season of KIDDING. She is Executive Producer and Director of IMPACT at A&E.
She will direct THIS IS JANE, the true story of the women who started the 1960’s Chicago illegal underground abortion ring, starring Michelle Williams and UNTITLED, a butch femme romantic, sex comedy.
A tireless activist for human and civil rights, Kimberly is proud to be a Governor of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and head of the Diversity Committee, as well as Executive Board member of the Director’s Guild of America, and a founding member of REFRAME, an industry-wide effort to end discrimination against women and people of color behind and in front of the lens. She is a member of Time’s Up and the WGA.
