Marielle Heller is a lot of things. Director, actor, writer, and definitely someone to watch. With critically acclaimed work like Can You Ever Forgive Me? it is clear that Marielle Heller knows how to direct her actors which is why we are going to take a look at this female filmmaker today. Let's zone in on Marielle Heller's career which has only just begun.
Marielle grew up in California and was always in love with theater. In fact, she called acting her first love. She was very active in her community theater growing up and then went to UCLA and the Royal Academy of Drama in London to further her acting studies. When she came back to the US, she dabbled in theater acting and even appeared in episodes of Spin City. After some time struggling with her acting career, she was inspired to pivot - and we are very glad she did! In 2012 she was chosen to be a Sundance Screenwriting Fellow in which she had the opportunity to develop a script for a feature-length film. Guess what that script ended up being?
It was The Diary of a Teenage Girl, her debut film, which she based on the 2002 graphic novel of the same name by Phoebe Gloeckner. She actually got the novel from her sister as a Christmas gift about five years prior and she loved it so much that she had to adapt it to a film. We are so glad that she did! The movie follows a 15-year-old girl in San Francisco in 1976 who has an affair with her mom's boyfriend twenty years her senior. Heller has stated that she loved how this young character was so confident in her sexuality and felt that films don't accurately represent young women like that. Hey, we love to see it! The film debuted at Sundance in 2015. This was the script that she worked on as a Sundance Screenwriting Fellow and a Sundance Directing Fellow. She was able to workshop this, film a teaser trailer, apply to grants, and raise money through that process where she was able to continually show people what she was working on.
The main character is played by Bel Powley who is absolutely outstanding in this role. She really is incredibly self-assured as a fifteen-year-old figuring out her sexuality. Whether she is checking herself out in the mirror, having sex with an older man, checking out girls at the park, or hooking up with ladies, this teenager is living to the fullest. No wonder her diary is a movie - it's scintillating!
She has described her own work as being about people who are uncomfortable talking about things that they need to talk about. She is interested in humans doing their best to go through life and is drawn to stories that are very character-based, which shines in her scripts. It is clear that she takes time to work with good actors who can really carry these stories which is how she came to direct Diary in the first place. She said that she "dreaded" turning her screenplay over to a director, so she decided to do it herself. We are definitely glad that she did!
She has directed two episodes of Casual and an episode of Transparent where Gaby Hoffmann and Carrie Brownstein wind up hooking up. Her style of directing lent itself well to these shows which are dramedies that are really focused on people's relationships. What better way of showing Gaby's character explore her sexuality and her relationships with others than to have her make love with rockstar-turned-actress Carrie Brownstein? Marielle directed this expertly!
Heller even acted in The Queen's Gambit as Alma Wheatley, our leading lady's adopted mother. Anya Taylor-Joy was certainly the star of the show, but Marielle brought so much heart to this complex mother character that she really stole the episodes that she was in. She had acted a little bit before this because her husband is comedian and director Jorma Tacoma, so she had small roles in movies like Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and MacGruber. However, this role was different. It was drama - and she was good at it!
Marielle does not currently have any films on her directing docket, but I do not think this is the last we are going to see of her. It is clear that Marielle believes in balance, so she does not get caught up in the hustle of Hollywood. When shooting her 2019 film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood she committed to 10 hour work days so that the cast and crew would have time to go home and spend evenings with their families. Normal film shoots can take about 16 hours, so this is a very considerate change in how things are traditionally done in Hollywood. She clearly has a big heart that she puts into her films to give us all hard-ons. That's another difference between many male and female directors. A female director like Marielle Heller puts an emphasis on taking care of family and she shares that value with her cast and crew.
Check out one of the nude scenes from The Diary of a Teenage Girl here:
