The defining moment of Kathryn Bigelow’s career: “I realised for the first time I could do this”

Posted On March 22, 2025March 22, 2025

Kathryn Bigelow has had a staggering filmmaking career, earning a number of achievements that have defined cinematic history and helped pave the way for a more inclusive industry, becoming the first woman to win an Oscar for ‘Best Director’. Through films like Point Break, Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker, the director has established an unflinchingly honest and dark style, often critiquing our cultural obsession with violence and exploring the impact on masculinity as a whole, creating nuanced characters that open our eyes to a new framework of gender expression.

While it seems as though her career advanced at colossal speed and she sky-rocketed towards success, finding her creative voice at a young age and exploring similar thematic strands in each of her films, the director has described the defining moment in her career in which she knew that she was onto something special.

Whether it be the soft masculinity of Point Break or exploration of systematic corruption in Blue Steel, Bigelow has created a fascinating tonal palette within her work that is both tough and tender, looking at strained social issues and the underlying humanity behind the people swept up in them. Through her work, she has established a signature gaze that deconstructs these issues in a compassionate way, always with an element of sensitivity as she contrasts extreme violence with her astute perspective.

While she is now considered as one of the most influential directors in Hollywood, she has described her early shock at being given the opportunity to direct, something that was sadly all too common for women who had a dream of being behind the camera.

While the industry is making an effort to improve on the gender disparity between men and women in leading roles, it was not always possible. Bigelow reflected on one of the defining moments from her career as she knew she had found her way into the industry, saying, “Near Dark was a breakthrough for me. That film gave me a tremendous amount of confidence. First of all, I had a phenomenal cast. And I think I realised for the first time that I could do this, make films. This was a language that fascinated me, compelled me. I was interested in making a Western. And I knew that that was going to be difficult. And so I set about making it as a hybrid, a kind of horror/Western”.

Near Dark, directed in 1987, follows a farm boy who becomes a member of the undead when a girl he meets turns out to be a vampire. It came just before the global success of Point Break, pointing towards her later reach with commercial audiences and ability to create stories that were universal in their appeal.

It paved the way for later studio projects and her seismic impact on the industry as a whole, with the director currently working on a top-secret political thriller starring Idris Elba, Greta Lee and Rebecca Ferguson. The reach of her work cannot be understated, and many women in the industry have cited her impact on making the role of director feel more reachable to those who have previously been excluded from this job.

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