Biography for
Mary Harron (I)

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Daughter of Donald Harron

Moved to England at age 13

Oxford educated

Step-daughter of writer Stephen Vizinczey.

Step-daughter of singer Catherine McKinnon

Former occupation as a rock journalist.

First writer to interview The Sex Pistols for an American publication.

Helped start the first punk magazine Punk.

Raised in Toronto, Canada.

Sister of Actor Producer Kelley Harron

Personal Quotes

"All women's history is hidden to some degree."

"Certainly, I've always been attracted to that. Punk rock, when I was a part of it, was called 'the underground.' There was something very attractive in all the hidden places. The hidden histories."

"If I did a big Hollywood movie, I wouldn't be able to control casting."

"There's an institutional reluctance - crews are mostly male - but there's also that [personal] reticence.... I went to a film class to talk, and it was half men and half women. But the women didn't talk. So finally, halfway through, I said, 'Why aren't the women talking? Why are only the boys talking?' ... But it's not only hard for women. It's also hard for anybody trying to do stories off the beaten track. I've made three films so far, but I made the films I wanted to make, how I wanted to make them."

"Women in the 20th century are astonishing, how much their lives changed. Today, people think who you are is all about internal psychology and what your parents are like. But it's also about your era and where you were born and your class, too, which American films hardly address at all."

"I feel that without feminism, I wouldn't be doing this. So I feel very grateful. Without it, God knows what my life would be. I don't make feminist films in the sense that I don't make anything ideological. But I do find that women get my films better."

"Sex is a very hard thing to be honest about."

"There's a scene in "American Psycho" that to me that was a real dividing line between male and female, the scene where Bateman [Christian Bale] has sex with two prostitutes. Because when I read that scene in the book, clearly it was written as a parody of a Penthouse fantasy. As written, the girls are really hot and everybody's really into the sex and having this insane sex experience, and of course that's a fantasy -- you know that they're prostitutes and they're not getting into it. It's a job. So my direction to the actors, to the girls, was that this is routine. This is a job you have to do. It's not like you're really excited about this. I think the portrayal of prostitution in Hollywood movies is always so ludicrous. The girls are always dressed in designer clothes and they're always gorgeous and have perfect skin and they're always really getting into it."

"The kinds of films female directors make, which are kind of outside the mainstream, they're not starring huge blockbuster stars. They're probably written in a way that is more off the beaten track. When my scripts go around, definitely I feel like people don't always see the potential in them. So each film is a huge push to get made. I thought that after "American Psycho" it would be easier, but it doesn't seem to get easier with each film. That is the one thing that surprises me, that each time it still seems a battle to get something made."

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