Patty Jenkins

Early life

Jenkins was born in July 24, 1971 in Victorville, California, to William T. Jenkins, an Air Force captain and fighter pilot who earned a Silver Star in the Vietnam War, and Emily Roth, who worked in San Francisco as an environmental scientist. She has an older sister, Elaine Roth.

She spent kindergarten through her junior year of high school living in Lawrence, Kansas. She received her undergraduate degree from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1993, and her masters in directing from the American Film Institute (AFI) in 2000. While a student at AFI, Jenkins, an avid fan of the films of Pedro Almodóvar, made the 2001 short film Velocity Rules, that she describes as a cross between a superhero film and Almodóvar's tone about an accident-prone housewife.

Career

Jenkins wrote and directed the 2003 crime drama film Monster about serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a former prostitute who was executed in Florida in 2002 for killing six men in the late 1980s and early 1990s. After the success of Monster, Jenkins was approached by United States Air Force record-setting test pilot Chuck Yeager to develop a film about his life, but the film fell apart. She then attempted to make a movie titled I Am Superman, a film with no relation to the DC Comics character, with Ryan Gosling, but that film was delayed when she became pregnant. After these films fell apart, Jenkins spent the next decade working in television in order to spend more time with her child. During promotion for Wonder Woman, Jenkins stated she still hoped to make I Am Superman with Ryan Gosling.

In 2011 she directed one segment in the made-for-television anthology film Five. In October 2011, she was hired to direct the sequel to Thor but left the project after less than two months over creative differences. In 2014, she was attached to a film about a female assassin called Sweetheart, but that film was never made. In 2015, Jenkins signed on as director for the DC Extended Universe film, Wonder Woman, with a screenplay by Allan Heinberg and a story co-written by Heinberg, Zack Snyder and Jason Fuchs. Wonder Woman premiered in 2017 and gave Jenkins the biggest domestic opening of all-time for a female director (surpassing previous record holder Fifty Shades of Grey by Sam Taylor-Johnson). With this film, Jenkins also became the first female director of an American studio superhero movie. Wonder Woman eventually became the highest-grossing movie directed by a woman, surpassing previous record holder Mamma Mia! by Phyllida Lloyd.

While promoting Wonder Woman, Jenkins mentioned that her next project would likely be a limited television series developed with her husband. This project was later revealed as a horror series titled Riprore to premiere on the video-on-demand service Shudder. In July 2017, the US cable network TNT announced Jenkins would direct the premiere of a six-episode television drama, One Day She'll Darken, written by her author husband Sam Sheridan and featuring her Wonder Woman star Chris Pine. She additionally will serve as an executive producer.

In September 2017, Variety Magazine reported Jenkins would return to direct Wonder Woman 2.

Other work

Jenkins, Wonder Woman actresses Gal Gadot and Lynda Carter, DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson, and U.N. Under-Secretary General Cristina Gallach appeared at the United Nations on October 21, 2016, the 75th anniversary of the first appearance of Wonder Woman, to mark the character's designation by the United Nations as its "Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls". The gesture was intended to raise awareness of UN Sustainable Development Goal No. 5, which seeks to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030. The decision was met with protests from UN staff members who stated in their petition to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that the character is "not culturally encompassing or sensitive", and served to objectify women. As a result, the character was stripped of the designation, and the project ended December 16.

Nominations and awards

In 2004, Jenkins won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature for her work on Monster and received the Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Medal from the American Film Institute. In 2011, Jenkins received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for the pilot of The Killing. She received two nominations from the 2012 Directors Guild of America Awards for Outstanding Directorial Achievement, one for "Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Series" for The Killing and the other for "Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television/Mini-Series" for Five. On January 28, 2012, she won the DGA award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement for a Dramatic Series for the pilot of The Killing.

Personal life

In 2007, Jenkins married Sam Sheridan, a former firefighter and the author of the book A Fighter's Heart. Jenkins and Sheridan have a son together, and live in Santa Monica.