Kimberly Peirce

Kimberly Peirce staked her place as a director of singular vision and craft with her unflinching debut feature, BOYS DON'T CRY (Hilary Swank, Chloë Sevingy, Peter Sarsgaard), which earned numerous honors including Best Actress Oscar for star, Hilary Swank, Golden Globe, Independent Spirit, NY and LA Film Critics, and National Board of Review Awards. Chloe Sevigny was nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe and won the Independent Spirit Award 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.

Peirce subsequently co-wrote and directed STOP-LOSS (Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Abbie Cornish, Ryan Phillipe) for Paramount Pictures, a topical and emotionally penetrating drama inspired by real-life stories of American soldiers, including her brother, fighting in Iraq. Peirce created an online community for Soldiers. Peirce won the Hamilton Behind the Camera True-Grit and Andrew Sarris Directing Awards.

In 2013 Peirce directed CARRIE (Julianne Moore, Chloë Moretz, Ansel Elgort) for Sony Pictures. The film was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Horror Film and won for Best Young Actor and won the 2014 People’s Choice Award for Favorite Horror Movie.

Kimberly has directed episodes of acclaimed shows: John Ridley’s AMERICAN CRIME (Felicity Huffman, Regina King, Timothy Hutton, Lilly Taylor), AMC's TURN (Jamie Bell), AMC's HALT AND CATCH FIRE (Lee Pace, Scoot Mcnairy, Mackenzie Davis), MANHATTAN (John Benjamin Hickey, Rachel Brosnahan), A&E History Channel's SIX (Walton Goggins), WIN award, Jill Soloway’s I LOVE DICK (Kevin Bacon, Kathryn Hahn), from Amazon and Justin Simien’s DEAR WHITE PEOPLE (Logan Browning) from Netflix. She is an Executive Producer of the upcoming A&E show IMPACT.

A tireless activist for human and civil rights, Kimberly is a founding member of REFRAME, an industry-wide effort to end discrimination against women and people of color in Hollywood and she is head of the Diversity Committee for Directors for the Academy of Motion Picture and on the Oscar task force. She gave the 2017 Academy's Governors Awards Speech and Honorary Oscar to Agnes Varda, spoke at the 2017 Women's March in Park City, gave the 2016 AFI keynote, the 2015 Outfest keynote and the 2014 Yale Transgender Week keynote.

She received a 2018 WOMEN IN FILM activist award. She has received GLAAD Media, Lambda Legal Defense, People for the American Way, Lesbian Anti-Violence Project and the 2013 OUTFEST Career Achievement Awards. This year, she will be honored with the Susan B. Anthony: Failure is Impossible Award and the University of Chicago Career Achievement awards.

She is a proud to be a Governor of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, an Executive Board and Western Council member of the Director's Guild of America, a member of Time’s Up and the WGA.

Kimberly received her BA from the University of Chicago, MFA from Columbia University Graduate Film and, graduated from Sundance Institute's Writing, Directing And Producing Labs.

She is next directing three films -- THIS IS JANE, staring Michelle Williams for John Lesher and Amazon pictures and UNTITLED, a butch femme romantic, sex comedy and a documentary on MARTINA NAVRATILOVA.