Karyn Kusama

Karyn Kiyoko Kusama (born March 21, 1968) is an American filmmaker. She made her feature directorial debut with the sports drama film Girlfight (2000), for which she won Best Director and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature. Kusama went on to direct the science fiction action film Æon Flux (2005), based on the animated series of the same name created by Peter Chung, and the horror comedy film Jennifer's Body (2009). After working extensively in television, Kusama directed the horror film The Invitation (2015), a segment in the horror anthology film XX (2017), and the crime drama film Destroyer (2018). Kusama currently serves as an executive producer on the Showtime survival horror thriller series Yellowjackets (2021–present), for which she was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards. Early life and education Kusama was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Haruo Kusama, a Japanese child psychiatrist. He immigrated from Japan and attended the medical school of Washington University.  Kusama's mother, Susan McGuire, was an occupational therapist. She is of Scottish-Irish descent. Her father is Japanese American and her mother is Scots-Irish-American. Karyn grew up highly invested in the film industry and watching movies, she used it as an outlet to help her feel seen. Her love for filmmaking grew from the female directors, Martha Coolidge and Amy Heckerling, Directors of Valley Girl and Fast Time. She graduated from Ladue Horton Watkins High School in St. Louis. In 1990, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film & Television from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. One of her professors at NYU, Carol Dysinger, admired her work and loved the way she told her story through filmmaking. Her jobs before making it big in the film industry varied from nannying, house painting, editing, and working with the production of independent films/ music videos. In 1992, after partnering with John Sayles as an assistant, she joined Gleason's Gym in Dumbo, Brooklyn where she started boxing. She used the fact that she was one of the few female boxers as inspiration for the film, "Girlfight" in 2000. She trained with a well known Spanish trainer, Hector Roca. Career