The Achievement
Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director on March 7, 2010. She won for The Hurt Locker, an Iraq War drama about a three-man U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team operating in Baghdad in 2004. The Best Director category had existed since the 1st Academy Awards in 1929. It took 82 years before a woman won it. Before Bigelow, only four women in history had been nominated for Best Director: Lina Wertmuller (1976), Jane Campion (1993), Sofia Coppola (2003), and Bigelow herself. That same awards season, Bigelow also became the first woman to win the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures, the honor that has historically been the strongest predictor of the Oscar. Since Bigelow's win, only two other women have taken the Best Director Oscar: Chloé Zhao for Nomadland (2021) and Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog (2022). In 96 years of Oscar history, three women have won. Ten have been nominated.
The Answer: Kathryn Bigelow, March 7, 2010
Kathryn Ann Bigelow was born on November 27, 1951, in San Carlos, California. Her path to filmmaking ran through fine arts, not Hollywood. At 20, she enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), then was accepted into the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study Program in New York, where her advisers included artist Brice Marden and cultural theorist Susan Sontag. She completed a graduate program in film theory and criticism at Columbia University, studying under film critic Andrew Sarris and literary theorist Edward Said. She graduated in 1979.
By the time The Hurt Locker was released in 2008, Bigelow had been directing feature films for more than two decades. Near Dark (1987), Point Break (1991), and Strange Days (1995) established her as a filmmaker who worked in masculine-coded genres (action, crime, and war) with visceral precision and psychological depth. She was 58 years old when she won the Oscar.
The Directors Guild of America Award came first, in late January 2010. No woman had won it before. Her DGA win made the Oscar likely.
Before Bigelow: 82 Years, Four Nominees, Zero Winners
The Academy Award for Best Director was established at the 1st Academy Awards in 1929, held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In the 82 years that followed, the category nominated a woman exactly four times.
Lina Wertmuller (Seven Beauties, 1976): The Italian filmmaker was the first woman ever nominated for Best Director. She lost to John G. Avildsen, who won for Rocky at the 49th Academy Awards.
Jane Campion (The Piano, 1993): She lost to Steven Spielberg, who won for Schindler's List, though Campion won Best Original Screenplay that same night.
Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, 2003): She lost to Peter Jackson, who won for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, 2010): She won.
The 34 years between Wertmuller's nomination and Bigelow's win are their own kind of data point. The category did not lack for films directed by women during that span. It lacked nominations.
That sparseness is worth sitting with. Bigelow's win came more than a century after women first worked behind a movie camera. Alice Guy-Blaché directed her debut film in 1896 and spent 25 years making over 1,000 films, yet film history nearly erased her entirely. The story of the first woman to direct a film runs deeper and stranger than most people know.
The Film That Changed Everything: The Hurt Locker
The Hurt Locker is a 2008 war film following a three-man EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) team, the Army specialists who locate and neutralize bombs, in Baghdad in 2004. The screenplay was written by Mark Boal, a journalist who had been embedded with an actual EOD unit in Iraq. IED attacks (improvised explosive devices, the roadside bombs that defined the Iraq War) had made EOD soldiers among the most exposed troops in the conflict. Boal noticed they had received almost no coverage in film or journalism.
The film was made outside the Hollywood studio system. Budget: $15 million. Bigelow shot The Hurt Locker across 44 days, primarily near Amman, Jordan, within miles of the Iraqi border. She and her crew captured 200 hours of footage. The U.S. military had initially cooperated with production but withdrew clearance mid-shoot. Bigelow continued filming guerrilla-style.
The film earned a 96% score on Rotten Tomatoes and grossed $49.9 million worldwide. It was a critical success and a commercial near-miss, one of the lowest-grossing Best Picture winners in Oscar history. At the time of the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony, most American moviegoers had not seen it.
That detail matters for what came next.
The Night of the 82nd Academy Awards
The 82nd Academy Awards were held on March 7, 2010, at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles. Both The Hurt Locker and Avatar had received nine nominations. The Directors Guild of America Award had already pointed toward Bigelow. When her name was announced for Best Director, she became the first woman in 82 years of Oscar history to win the category.
Her acceptance speech was brief and specific:
She did not call it historic. She expressed hope that the word "woman" would eventually be unnecessary in front of "director." That distinction, between celebrating the milestone and wanting it not to need celebrating, runs through everything she said that night.
The Ex-Husband in the Other Corner: James Cameron and Avatar
Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron married on August 17, 1989, and divorced in 1991. The relationship, two years long, did not end their professional connection. Cameron produced Bigelow's Blue Steel (1990) and co-wrote Strange Days (1995). They had been colleagues for years by the time they found themselves competing at the 82nd Academy Awards.
The scale contrast between their two films was almost arithmetically absurd.
Avatar cost $237 million to produce and had grossed approximately $2.9 billion worldwide by the night of the ceremony, making it the highest-grossing film in history at that point. The Hurt Locker had grossed $49.9 million total, $17 million of that domestically. Both films had nine Oscar nominations.
Avatar won 3 of its 9 nominations: Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Visual Effects. Every technical category it was eligible for, it took. The Hurt Locker swept the major categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing.
Cameron was publicly gracious throughout. He described the outcome as fitting. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in separating commercial reach from artistic merit, made one of its cleaner distinctions.
Who Has Won Best Director Since? Chloé Zhao and Jane Campion
Three women have won the Academy Award for Best Director. In 96 years of Oscar history, three.
Kathryn Bigelow won 82 years after the Best Director category was established. No woman had won in the eight decades prior. She took the Oscar at the 82nd Academy Awards on March 7, 2010, for The Hurt Locker, becoming the first woman ever to win Best Director.
Chloé Zhao won for Nomadland at the 93rd Academy Awards on April 25, 2021. The film follows a widow played by Frances McDormand traveling the American West in a van after losing her home and job in the 2008 recession. Zhao also won the Directors Guild of America Award, the Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Critics' Choice that season. She was the first woman of color to win Best Director at the Academy Awards. Her win came 11 years after Bigelow's.
Jane Campion won for The Power of the Dog at the 94th Academy Awards on March 27, 2022. She is the first woman nominated twice for Best Director: her first nomination came in 1993 for The Piano, when she won Best Original Screenplay instead. Her second nomination and win came 29 years after the first.
Then a gap: 2023, 2024, 2025. No women have won since Campion.
Other women nominated for Best Director who did not win include Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird, 2018), Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman, 2021), Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall, 2024), and Coralie Fargeat (The Substance, 2025). Including those nominees and the three winners, ten women have been nominated for Best Director across more than 96 years of Oscar history.
As of 2026, no Black woman has ever been nominated for Best Director.
What Has Actually Changed for Women Directors
The USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has tracked women directors in top-100 films since 2007. In that year, women directed 2.7% of those films. In 2024, the figure was 13.4%. That is real movement: roughly five times more women directing major Hollywood films than when the tracking began.
The Celluloid Ceiling Report, published annually by the SDSU Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, puts the figure at 16% of the top 250 domestic grossing films in 2024. Across USC Annenberg's full 18-year sample (2007 to 2024), women held only 10% of directing roles in the top 100 films. The rate has improved, but the cumulative total reflects how many years it spent near zero.
Streaming has moved faster. Women directed 32% of streaming programs in 2024-25, up from 23% the prior year. Theatrical film has lagged considerably behind.
Bigelow's acceptance speech used the word "modifier." She wanted the word "woman" to become unnecessary before "director." The USC Annenberg and Celluloid Ceiling data suggest that modifier is still doing significant work.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Director?
Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director. She won at the 82nd Academy Awards on March 7, 2010, for The Hurt Locker. The Best Director category had existed for 82 years before a woman won it.
What film did Kathryn Bigelow win Best Director for?
Bigelow won for The Hurt Locker (2008), an Iraq War drama about a three-man U.S. Army EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) bomb disposal team operating in Baghdad in 2004. The screenplay was written by journalist Mark Boal based on his embedded reporting with an actual EOD unit. The film was made on a $15 million budget and won six Academy Awards total, including Best Picture.
How many women have won the Academy Award for Best Director?
As of 2026, only three women have ever won Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, 2010), Chloé Zhao (Nomadland, 2021), and Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog, 2022). Only ten women have ever been nominated across more than 96 years of Oscar history.
Did Kathryn Bigelow beat James Cameron at the Oscars?
Yes. Bigelow beat her ex-husband James Cameron, whose film Avatar had grossed nearly $2.9 billion worldwide and was widely expected to win. Avatar won three Oscars, all in technical categories: Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Visual Effects. The Hurt Locker won six, sweeping the major awards including Best Picture and Best Director. Cameron was publicly gracious and was the first person in the Kodak Theatre to stand and applaud.
Who was the first woman ever nominated for Best Director?
Italian filmmaker Lina Wertmuller was the first woman nominated for Best Director, for Seven Beauties at the 49th Academy Awards in 1977. She did not win. In the 34 years between Wertmuller's nomination and Bigelow's win, only two other women were nominated: Jane Campion (The Piano, 1993) and Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, 2003).
Did Kathryn Bigelow also win the Directors Guild Award?
Yes. In January 2010, Bigelow became the first woman ever to win the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures, also for The Hurt Locker. The DGA Award is historically the most reliable predictor of the Oscar for Best Director, and her win there signaled the historic Oscar was likely.
Has a woman of color won Best Director?
Yes, but only once. Chloé Zhao became the first woman of color to win Best Director when she took the Oscar for Nomadland at the 93rd Academy Awards in April 2021. As of 2026, no Black woman has ever been nominated for Best Director.
The Modifier She Wanted to Be Moot
In 2025, fifteen years after The Hurt Locker, Bigelow premiered A House of Dynamite, a political thriller, at the Venice Film Festival. The film was nominated for the Golden Lion, Venice's top prize. She is still working, still directing in genres that require precision and nerve.
Three women have won Best Director in 96 years of Oscar history. That sentence is a milestone and a number simultaneously. The milestone is real. The number is what it is.
Her win came more than a century after cinema's first female director picked up a camera. Read about the first woman to ever direct a film.