Tamara Jenkins

Tamara Jenkins (born May 2, 1962) is an American filmmaker and occasional actress. She is best known for her feature films Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), The Savages (2007), and Private Life (2018). Early life Jenkins was born in Philadelphia, the daughter of Lillian and Manuel Jenkins. Her father is Jewish, and her mother is Italian American. After her parents divorced, her father, a former nightclub owner, took custody of her and her three brothers, moving the family to California to work as a car salesman. She lived in Beverly Hills with her father and brothers, and attended Beverly Hills High for a year and a half. In the 1980s, Jenkins moved to New York City where she performed in various productions, including the first national tours of Chicago, Les Miserables, and Cats, as well as the 1993 Broadway Revival of My Fair Lady. She enrolled in the graduate filmmaking program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in the 1990s. Winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship for filmmaking, Jenkins also attended the Sundance Institute Screenwriting and Filmmakers Lab. Career Jenkins began her career with a short film, 1991's Fugitive Love, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Afterwards, she completed a congressional mandate associated with PBS to bring diverse programming to public television that was funded by the Independent Television Service. Another black-and-white short, 1993's Family Remains, followed, which received a Special Jury Prize for Excellence in Short Filmmaking at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival.