Kathryn Bigelow

Well, if screenwriter Mark Boal was kind of a newbie when he worked on The Hurt Locker, director Kathryn Bigelow balanced things out with her crazy impressive experience.

Bigelow's interests have ranged all over the place, both onscreen and in life. She started out in art school doing painting, then ended up going to Columbia University to study film.

Then, even once she dove into film full throttle, she still bounced around a bit in terms of subject matter. Blue Steel (1990) is about stalking, Strange Days (1995) presents a dystopian vision of 1999 Los Angeles, and The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty (2012) explore the impact of the Iraq war and terrorism.

Okay, yes, a lot of her movies share an overall interest in edgier themes. She even has a movie about vampires (1987's Near Dark)—what's edgier than that?

However, those movies are also pretty different in a lot of ways—the protagonists, the subject matter, the settings, the time periods, the communities. You know, basically everything. So, even within her interest in zero-dark subject matter, there's a good deal of variation.

Bigelow is also responsible for some lighter works that don't really fit into that whole darkness thing we just mentioned. Have you seen Point Break? That was hers. She even directed a music video for the band New Order (source). So, she clearly also knows how to have a little fun.

Of course, Bigelow is significant in film history because she did some major glass ceiling-busting during The Hurt Locker's awards season. She was the first woman to win an award for best direction from the Directors Guild of America, BAFTA, and the Oscars (source). Her films haven't always been financially lucrative—and The Hurt Locker sure wasn't—but she's already carved out a pretty amazing legacy for herself...and she's still far from done.