Harron, Mary

Journalist, film maker and screen writer Mary Harron was born in Canada. She spent time as a child in Toronto and Los Angeles. She moved to England when she was thirteen and later attended St Anne’s College at the University of Oxford, where she studied English. She moved to New York City in the 1970s and became part of the punk rock scene there. Here she helped start the Punk magazine and conducted the first interview with the Sex Pistols for an American publication. She also wrote for the British music newspaper Melody Maker during the 1970s. She returned to England in the 1980s worked at The Observer newspaper as a drama critic, and at The Guardian and the New Statesman as a music critic. Towards the end of the decade, she began writing and directing documentaries for the BBC. Moving back to New York City in the 1990s, she worked on a pop culture programme for PBS and began making films. Her first feature film, I Shot Andy Warhol, is about Valerie Solanas' failed assassination attempt on Andy Warhol. She has directed four other feature films, American Psycho, The Notorious Bettie Page, The Moth Diaries and Charlie Says, and has directed episodes of American dramas, including Six Feet Under and Big Love. She is married to the film maker John C. Walsh.