Biography

May 27, 1951 · London, England, UK

October 24, 2013 · London, England, UK (anaplastic thyroid cancer)

Her terrible stage fright settled her on the path of directing.

Frequently casts Robert Carlyle.

By her 17th birthday she was working as an assistant stage manager at Coventry Rep, where she also became involved in publicity, theatre administration and acting.

The daughter of a stage manager mother, Rosemary, and an actor father, Michael Bird.

A former theatre director, she worked at the Royal Court theatre, London, for six years. Runs 4-Way film production company with Robert Carlyle.

[on Mad Love (1995)] Miramax was owned by Disney at the time and I was in post-production with a nice Disney teen film, which was quite edgy originally. We always thought we were making a film for 15 and up, and suddenly we had to make it for PG. Which meant I had to take the heart of the film out. That was quite a lesson. You're not in charge, it's not your money, it's someone else's, you've basically got to do what you're told

Generally the people who make the decisions about which films get green-lit are men. And men tend to be more interested in subjects dealing with men. And it has proved to be quite difficult to get films written with female protagonists financed.

If you choose to go out on a limb and make films about social injustices you tend to be very unfashionable, very unemployable.

[on Priest (1994)] I do not believe that an organization as powerful and influential as the Catholic Church should be immune from observation and comment from nonmembers. The Catholic League suffers from the blinkered, indeed totalitarian view that the rest of us should share its assumptions. They even ignore that members of their own church do not share their own interpretation of their own faith. [written statement, 1995]