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The Basics on Chloé Zhao, the First Asian Woman to Earn a Golden Globe Nom For Directing

04/02/2021 - 06:50 PM

Nomadland is one of the biggest stories coming out of the Golden Globe nominations [1], breaking into the best drama picture race, along with writer and director Chloé Zhao [2], who became the first Asian woman to receive a best director nomination in the history of the Globes. Although Nomadland is Zhao's biggest project so far, she's been a staple on the indie film circuit for a few years, carving out a space for herself — and even grabbing the attention of one of the biggest movie franchises [3] in history! If Zhao's nomination has you curious to learn more, you're in the right place. Keep reading to find out some of the most intriguing facts we've learned about her so far.

She Has Been All Over the World

According to a 2013 feature in Filmmaker magazine, Zhao's international life began early [4]. She was born in Beijing, attended a boarding school in London as a teenager, and eventually went to college at Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts — where she studied political science, not film!

An Early Job Changed Her Life Path

At first, Zhao told Filmmaker magazine, she leaned towards politics and history [5] as a way of detangling her own complicated upbringing. "It goes back to when I was a teenager in China, being in a place where there are lies everywhere," she said. "You felt like you were never going to be able to get out. A lot of info I received when I was younger was not true, and I became very rebellious toward my family and my background. I went to England suddenly and relearned my history. Studying political science in a liberal arts college was a way for me to figure out what is real. Arm yourself with information, and then challenge that too."

When she began working a bartender, though, all that changed. She became "turned off by politics" and realised, instead, she liked "meeting people and learning about their histories." From there, she enrolled in the graduate film program at New York University's famed Tisch School of the Arts, and the rest is history!

She Developed an Interest in American Pop Culture

In a 2018 interview with Vogue for her feature The Rider, Zhao revealed her long-standing love for American pop culture. "I have an obsession with the old West [6]," she told the magazine, explaining how she came to create a film about a Native American cowboy based loosely on a real cowboy she befriended. "I wanted to be where Michael Jackson [7] was," she added. "A lot of people did."

She's an Animal Lover

While doing the (remote) press for Nomadland, Zhao revealed a fun fact [8] to the Associated Press: her "roommates" at her Ojai, CA, home are three chickens and two dogs!

She Wants to Tell Stories of Hope

Back in 2018, Zhao mused to Vogue about the kind of storyteller she wanted to be, and landed on one major thing: hope. "At a time like this, there's a need to see that there's good in America. We're always being told that we have to win all the time. But that's not real life," she said. "Our film's message isn't the typical Hollywood ending. [The protagonist] has lost something, but he doesn't give up. He never would."

She added, "I would never want to make a film without hope."

She's Experienced the Nomad Life Herself

"Every year or so I feel the urge to hit the road [9]," Zhao told the Associated Press. "There is something about taking a shower at 5:30 in the morning at a truck stop. You walk outside and you see the big trucks coming in and you see the sun rising over the mountains. I forget about all the problems. I forget about all the things that I think define who I am, and just feel that transience, people coming in and out and existing."

Zhao actually lived out of her own van during filming for Nomadland. She even gave it a name: Akira.

She's Joining the Marvel Universe

Zhao is the director of the upcoming Marvel movie Eternals, focussed on a group of immortal aliens who reunite to protect humanity from their evil foes. She'll be the third female director (and first woman of colour) to helm a Marvel feature, following Captain Marvel's Anna Boden and Black Widow's Cate Shortland.


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