Some women have lived very interesting lives!

A very talented painter, Kathryn spent two years at the San Francisco Art Institute. At 20, she won a scholarship to the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program. She was given a studio in a former Offtrack Betting building, literally in an old bank vault, where she made art and waited to be critiqued by people like Richard Serra, Robert Rauschenberg and Susan Sontag. Later she earned a scholarship to study film at Columbia University School of Arts, graduating in 1979. She was also a member of the British avant garde cultural group, Art and Language. Kathryn is the only child of the manager of a paint factory and a librarian.

Received a Dallas Star award from the AFI Dallas film festival in 2009.

The American Cinematheque honored Bigelow by showing all of her films at The Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, June 5-7 2009.

From July 1-13, 2009, the Harvard Film Archive hosted a retrospective of her career, showing all of her films from The Loveless (1981) to The Hurt Locker (2008). The retrospective was titled "Take It To The Edge: The Films Of Kathryn Bigelow" and featured a Q&A session with her.

First woman to win the Directors Guild of America Award for directing a feature film (for The Hurt Locker (2008).

In 2010, she became the first woman in Oscar history to win the Best Director award. First woman to win a BAFTA Award for Best Director.

When she sent an unfinished short feature to Columbia University's film school, director Milos Forman - then serving as a professor there - found it impressive enough to offer her a scholarship. She graduated from Columbia in 1979.

As of 2018 she was the fifth woman to be nominated for the Directing Academy Award. The other four were: Lina Wertmüller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola and Greta Gerwig. Bigelow ended up becoming the first woman to win the award.

Competed with ex-husband James Cameron for the Best Director Oscar in 2010. This marked the first time that (ex-) spouses were nominated alongside each other in this category. She went on to win the award--the first woman director to do so.

In 2010 she was named one of "Time" magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World.

She has works in the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection, including Near Dark (1987), a 1987 feature-length film, and her personal paper archive.

On March 7, 2010, at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, CA, her Best Director Oscar statuette for The Hurt Locker (2008) was presented to her by Barbra Streisand, the only woman ever to have won the Golden Globe for Best Director.

Hung out with Susan Sontag and Philip Glass when she first came to New York City in 1970. She and Glass even collaborated on a business venture where they bought old loft places in Soho and Tribeca, renovated them and then sold them. She says she was often the one who sanded the floors.

As of 2018 she has directed two actors to Academy Award-nominated performances: Jeremy Renner (Best Actor, The Hurt Locker (2008)), and Jessica Chastain (Best Actress, Zero Dark Thirty (2012)).

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