Film Career
Leder began her career as a script supervisor on a string of films, including Spawn of the Slithis (1978), Dummy (1979), The Boy Who Drank Too Much (1980), and A Long Way Home (1980), before moving on to the TV series Hill Street Blues (1981). After making a short film, Short Order Dreams, written and funded by her father Paul, she screened it for Steven Bochco, creator of Hill Street Blues, and his friend Gregory Hoblit who hired her to direct an episode of L.A. Law.
In 1988 Leder went on to direct episodes of Crime Story, The Bronx Zoo, Midnight Caller, before getting hired to direct several episodes of China Beach (1988–91) for which she was nominated for four Emmys. She decided to make a few made-for-TV films, Woman with a Past (1992), House of Secrets (1993), and Baby Brokers (1994) before getting hired as one of the core directors for ER (1994-2009). She made proficient use of her cinematography background and the Steadicam to create high energy scenes that moved around the corridors and rooms of the hospital. The show earned her Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series in 1995 and 1996. She returned to direct an episode of the series during its final season in 2009. She was receiving much attention and soon received a job offer from Steven Spielberg as director of the film The Peacemaker (1997), an action-adventure film that she insists she sees as a drama. Leder became one of only a handful of woman directors to break into the action genre, and her assignment to this film generated much press about the opportunities for women directors in Hollywood. She studied trains and other visual effects to prepare herself for the film and is proud of the results.
Continuing to work for DreamWorks, she directed Deep Impact (1998) and Pay It Forward (2000) while simultaneously creating a personal love story about her parents, Sentimental Journey (1999). Since then, Leder has been moving back and forth between television and film, executive producing and/or directing such television series as The Beast (2001), John Doe (2002), Johnny Zero (2004), and Vanished (2006), and films or made-for-TV movies such as Thick as Thieves (2009), U.S. Attourney (2009), and Heavenly (2011).
Currently, she is directing, working on pre-production for the film All Quiet on the Western Front (2012).
Read more about this topic: Mimi Leder
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