Gillian May Armstrong (born 18 December 1950) is an award-winning Australian director of feature films and documentaries.

Biographie

Armstrong was born in Australia, Melbourne, Victoria on 18 December 1950. She went to a local high school, Vermont High School (now Vermont Secondary College), and was the middle child of a local real estate agent father and a primary school teacher mother who gave up work to have a family. Armstrong stated in The Australian that her parents were always very supportive of their hopes and dream, which was not always the way it was for women in the 1960s and 70s. Her father was a frustrated photographer who wasn't allowed to follow his dreams professionally, yet always practised as an amateur. Armstrong reminiscences of how she grew up in a dark room, learning all about photography. When she first decided to go to the art school, Armstrong didn't have a very firm grasp on what she wanted to do.

Armstrong was a technical theatre student at Swinburne College while paying her tuition by working as a waitress. Originally, she attended school to become a theatrical set designer but the school that she attended also offered a film course. After she took it she was enamored by the great names of cinema and decided to enter the film industry. Then she won a scholarship to join the first 12 students at the country's first and only film school, the Australian Film and Television School. While she was in school, The Australian film industry was nonexistent, she recalls how weird the accent sounded in new films, because it wasn't American, it was Australian.

Soon, she became Australia's first female film director at the age of 27. During the time of the development of Australian Cinema Armstrong recalls in a Washington Post interview that tremendous tax breaks led to a frightful overproduction. Everybody was interested in doing deals and even stockbrokers were becoming directors. However, very few of them had the commitment to cinema that Armstrong and others had, and the films would be shown for a week or two, or not released at all. After Armstrong's second film My Brilliant Career, she had offers from Hollywood but quickly turned them all away, preferring to stay in Australia to make a deliberately small film called Starstruck. After the release of Starstruck, Armstrong went around giving interviews dressed in a large fuzzy blue sweater dress decorated with coloured beads, a black-and-white polka dot blouse, black tights and blue suede shoes all topped by a punk shag haircut.

Gillian Armstrong is married with two daughters.