COUNTRY OF BIRTH

China

INDUSTRY

Film

TOP ACHIEVEMENTS

Chloé Zhao is a Chinese film director, screenwriter, and producer, known for the movies she made about journeys of self-discovery set in the American West. She is the only woman ever to win an Oscar and a Golden Globe in the director category

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

Chloé Zhao, original name Zhao Ting, was born March 31, 1982, in Beijing, China. From an early age, Zhao was drawn to influences from Western pop culture. At the same time, she was uninterested in school and grew into a rebellious teen. Although she spoke little English, in 1998, her parents sent her to Brighton College, a private boarding school in England where she remained for two years. She completed high school in Los Angeles and attended Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, where she graduated in 2005 with a bachelor's degree in political science and a minor in film studies. After working as a bartender, she joined the Graduate Studies Film Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Her graduate project was the short film Daughters(2010) about a girl in rural China who escapes an arranged marriage.

EARLY CAREER

Daughters premiered at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. It won Best Student Live Action Short at the 2010 Palm Springs International ShortFest and Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Cinequest Film Festival. Zhao's debut feature film, Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015), premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and earned a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature. It later played at the Cannes Film Festival as part of the Director's Fortnight selection.

ACHIEVEMENTS

Zhao’s second feature film, The Rider (2017), earned her nominations for Best Feature and Best Director at the 33rd Independent Spirit Awards. It played at the Cannes Film Festival as part of the Director’s Fortnight selection and won the Art Cinema Award. In 2018, Zhao directed her third feature film, Nomadland, shot over four months traveling the American West in an RV with many real-life nomadic workers. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival, winning the Golden Lion award, and won the People's Choice Award at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. Nomadland went on to earn Zhao both an Oscar and a Golden Globe as Best Director – she is the second woman to win either award and the first woman who has ever won both.

RECOGNITION

Zhao has been honored with Academy Awards, Directors Guild of America Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and British Academy Film Awards, amongst many others. In 2021 alone, Zhao won 34 awards season trophies for directing, 13 for screenplay, and 9 for editing.

ADDITIONAL FACTS

• Zhao says her earliest introductions to American cinema were The Terminator, Ghost, and Sister Act.
• Zhao mostly casts nonprofessional actors in her films.
• One of her professors at NYU's Tisch School of The Arts was Spike Lee.
• In 2021, Zhao appeared in Time's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.