Internationally acclaimed Australian film director Gillian Armstrong began her career in the mid-1970s and quickly became an integral part of Australia’s new wave of film. In 1976, she began a series of documentaries portraying the coming of age of three Adelaide girls: Smokes and Lollies (1976); Fourteen’s Good, Eighteen’s Better (1981); Bingo, Bridesmaids and Braces (1988); Not Fourteen Again (1996); and Love, Lust & Lies (2010), which won the Australian Director’s Guild Award for Best Direction in a Feature Documentary.

Her first feature, My Brilliant Career (1979), was the first Australian feature directed by a woman in fifty years and kicked off a highly decorated career for Armstrong. She went on to direct features such as Starstruck (1982), Mrs. Soffel (1984), High Tide (1987), The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992), Little Women (1994), Oscar and Lucinda (1997), Charlotte Gray (2001), and Death Defying Acts (2007).

Gillian Armstrong

Photo by Tim Baure

Armstrong was the first president of the Australian Screen Director’s Association (ASDA). In 1993, she received an AM for distinguished services to the Australian Film Industry, and in 1995, she was awarded the Chauvel Award from the Brisbane International Film Festival for her contribution to the industry. She holds an Honorary Doctorate in Film from Swinburne University and a Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, from the University of New South Wales. In 2007, she received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Australian Directors Guild.

Armstrong has directed actresses such as Judy Davis, Jo Kennedy, Diane Keaton, Greta Scacchi, Susan Sarandon, Winona Ryder, Kirsten Dunst, Claire Daines, Samantha Mathis, Cate Blanchett, and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Winona Ryder was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Little Women, Diane Keaton was nominated for a Golden Globe for Mrs. Soffel, and Judy Davis has won a host of awards under Armstrong’s direction, including two BAFTAs and an AFI award for My Brilliant Career and an AFI Award and National Society of Film Critics Award (NSFC) award for High Tide.

Armstrong received the Dorothy Azner Directing Award at the Los Angeles Women in Film Crystal Awards in 1995, and in 2008 she was awarded the Women in Hollywood Icon Award in recognition of her contribution to the film industry. In 2015, as part of the Australian Directors Guild, Armstrong and her fellow Gender Committee members were successful in getting Screen Australia to put aside money for women’s filmmaking projects and workshops.²⁶

You’ve referred to yourself as a feminist, and yet you prefer not to be labeled a female director. How has that label affected your career?

In the beginning, I was a novelty, and My Brilliant Career was about women’s rights, so it was very easy for journalists to label me as a feminist. I think it did affect some people’s perception of my films—a woman made this, so she will be critical of the male characters! And you don’t want that. After Brilliant Career’s success, I was sent every period film that had a woman as a main character, and often they were woman achievers—the first person to fly a plane or climb a mountain. Look, I think for all directors, we’re not defined by our gender; we’re defined by our individual talents. So I suppose I do feel that after thirty years of being a director, there was a point where I just felt, yes, I was thrilled to be a woman director, but it was still a sexist labeling. My films are not like Jane Campion’s or Katherine Bigelow’s.

I’m absolutely a feminist and not ashamed to say it, but I think in a bigger way I’m a humanist. I remember at one point my American agent saying, “Would you want to do something more of another style? Would you like to do a thriller?” And then I kept reading all these scripts, and I realized, there’s a weird thing that happens in a thriller—the last third is revenge. And I realized I don’t want to support revenge. I think twice about violence in films. So no, I’m more of a moralist, really!

That’s interesting. You don’t have a lot of violence in your films. But you do have love stories, in nearly all of your films.

They’re all love stories. Forget the angry feminist. I’m just a big softie. I think I’m definitely a romantic at heart.

What were your most prominent cinematic influences growing up in Australia?

Really, the experience was very different from someone who grew up in America, where there was still the thought that they could go to Hollywood. So when people over the years said to me, “Oh, you know, Martin Scorsese sat in the dark and looked at movies and thought, one day I could do that …” well, that wasn’t something a young girl in Australia was thinking when she went to see American movies. We had no cinema of our own and no female role models.

I loved to go to the movies and was a TV fan—Lassie, Flipper, and Rin Tin Tin!—but really I loved reading and stories and drawing. I was one of those kids who would hide under the sheets when the light was meant to go out to keep reading my books. And my mother took us to see pantomimes, and I have to say that was more thrilling than anything—with the music, the lights, and the live orchestra would play, and the curtain would go up, and Peter Pan would fly down. So really I think books and musical theater were probably even more powerful than the films I saw.

Although, one of the most pivotal films for me growing up was actually To Kill a Mockingbird. My parents took us to see it, and I think it was probably the first time I saw a film that I really identified with. It was the first film I saw that had a real social conscience. It was deeply affecting for a young person to see. Because the children’s films that I saw were lovely and escapist and fantasies, and obviously often had a moral story, but this was something much deeper and said a lot stronger things about the human condition. I think the social contents of that film and the moral dilemma really affected me. It was a really seminal experience.

Can you tell me about your inspiration to direct My Brilliant Career?

Well, Brilliant Career was a famous Australian novel brought to me by a wonderful producer, Margaret Fink. It took a number of years to get into shape, and then the financing was on and off. But it was my first feature, so I was in some ways sort of secretly hoping, “Go ahead, take longer!”

I was developing other lower-budgeted features at the time, when a male friend made a comment about the main character, Sybylla. He said, “Who are you going to cast? Obviously she’s got to be really plain, because she goes on and on about her looks.” And it was that comment that made me think I have to do this. Of course I was the only woman director around, and I thought, if a man does it he’ll stuff it up. Every woman looks in the mirror and pulls herself apart. She’s an adolescent girl who’s growing up, and just because she’s insecure about her looks and she’s not a conventional beauty, that doesn’t mean that she’s hideously plain. It was that comment that made me feel I have to actually do this film or else poor Miles Franklin’s book will be ruined.

You once said that you don’t think of your female characters as being strong; instead, you would define them as complex. What draws you to a protagonist in a story?

That’s difficult to say. I react instinctively to material. Something I’ve been sent, or something I’ve read, it’s completely unconscious while you’re caught up in it and follow the journey—and it should be, because one day your audience will go on the same journey.

But, for instance, the story behind High Tide actually—originally, Laura [Jones] wrote Judy’s [Judy Davis] character as a man—it was only when we started casting that we changed it. I saw a movie, literally that night, about a young, outspoken, honest woman who meets an older man, a drifter—and he’s affected by this young woman. And I came out of that film thinking we’ve seen this story so many times before. And here it was our story, too. It was my husband actually who suggested we just change it to a woman.

So we said to the casting director, “Forget that list of 30-year-old men. Now we need a 30-something woman.” And of course, there was no one better than Judy—so we sent her the script and said, “Judy, the main character we want you to play is called John, but we’ll rewrite for you.”

In the end, we realized that a woman who had deserted her daughter was a much more interesting character, for the reason that men have been making all these stories about alienated, drifting men forever, and no one’s making a story about the alienated, drifting woman. So she wasn’t a strong woman. She was bad, and she was complicated, and even by the end of the film she still hasn’t made up her mind. Is she going to stay, or is she going to run again?

What about Little Women? What drew you to that story?

Denise Di Novi and Amy Pascal, who was a junior executive at that time at Sony-Columbia, offered it to me. I turned it down like three times, because I thought it was too like Brilliant Career—a period film, woman ahead of the times, wants to be a writer. But Denise was very clever at talking me around. And when I reread Little Women, I realized that it wasn’t a story just about someone who wanted to achieve and write. It was also about family, about sisters. So that’s how they sucked me in.

And of course when I met Winona [Ryder]—because Winona was attached, so I had to really feel happy that she could be Jo—and when I met her, I felt there was a whole other side of her that she hadn’t played in movies. She was very smart and well read and intelligent and passionate. In the end, they were a wonderful cast—with Kirsten Dunst and Claire Danes, Trini Alvarado, Susan [Sarandon], and Winona, and of course Christian Bale. That project came to me with some very persuasive women behind it.

You wrote the screenplay for your first long narrative film, The Singer and the Dancer (1977). Can you tell me about that experience? You adapted it from a short story?

Yes, from an Alan Marshall story. I had adapted my short, One Hundred a Day, from one of his books. Everyone was saying the government was going to change, they were going to cut back on the arts, so I was desperate to find a story. I really liked this story, but I wanted to adapt it to make it more contemporary. So we talked about it, and Alan said, “Well, you write the young woman, and I’ll write the older woman.” It’s about a young woman meeting an older woman, and they’re both outsiders. So we did that, and that was The Singer and the Dancer.

But the one thing I learned when I saw it on the screen—every time the young woman’s dialogue came out, I was like, “Oh no, that’s terrible!” So that was my lesson in life. You know what? You’re not a writer. I’ve worked very closely with all the writers I’ve script-edited, but I’ve never written a line of dialogue since Singer and Dancer.

I think people need to accept it. There’s too much of a push, especially on young filmmakers, that you’re not as talented as everyone else unless you are an auteur. And sometimes, we have different strengths and weaknesses. I’ve worked with some of the world’s most brilliant, brilliant writers, and it’s just been a joy—and so exciting to talk about something, and they go away and write something better than you ever imagined. It’s a wonderful skill that I admire and love to be part of. But I’m not a frustrated writer. I’m happy to accept that isn’t one of my best talents.

Percentage-wise, there are so few working female directors. Do you mentor up-and-coming Australian female directors?

It’s terrible! I would have thought there’d be a lot more women out there directing by now. I find that it’s actually pretty hard to have attachments when you’re directing, especially the very intimate sort of films—you can’t have another person there. But I have had brilliant female assistants who have gone on to extraordinary careers. I do workshops and endless panels and lectures. Last year I did a workshop with some indigenous filmmakers, and I’ve been mentoring a very talented young indigenous Australian. I saw her script and advised, and then advised about crew. And she let me look at the cut, and I gave her some suggestions.

I’m a member of the Australian Directors Guild as well, so I’m a lobbyist for the film industry and film culture, and for short film funding. It seems to be never-ending. And I have a visual artist/animator and a young writer-director in my family now, so there’s some personal mentoring going on as well with my daughters!

What are you working on now? I read about your film The Great. Annette Bening is attached?

It was a play written by this brilliant Australian writer, Tony McNamara, that I worked on for a couple of years developing into a film. It’s very clever and funny, and Annette Bening just immediately got it and loved it. But at the moment in the world of drama finance, it’s gotten tougher and tougher. So it’s on hold, and looks like Tony will direct it. I am sure he will do a brilliant job. I am involved in researching a documentary about the costume designer Orry Kelly, Women He’s Undressed, and I’m also developing two contemporary scripts. Actually, I shouldn’t say this. Never ever say what’ll be next. You never know. And then something comes along that’s completely unexpected.

Women He’s Undressed was released in July 2015 and was nominated for the Australian Film Critics Association Awards (AFCA) for Best Documentary, the Australian Film Institute Awards (AACTA) for Best Feature Length Documentary, the Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards (FCCA) for Best Feature Documentary, and the Screen Music Awards, Australia, for Best Music for a Documentary.