Catherine Hardwicke on the Twilight film franchise she launched and which men took over, and new film Mafia Mamma
- Catherine Hardwicke directed Twilight, launching a huge, moneymaking young adult franchise, but wasn’t asked to make any of the follow-ups
- Her latest film, Mafia Mamma, follows the tribulations of a woman who becomes head of a mafia family. Hardwicke sees echoes of her own experiences in Hollywood
Catherine Hardwicke’s latest movie, Mafia Mamma, is a comedic fantasy about a smart, talented, too-long underestimated American woman, played by Toni Collette, who suddenly becomes the head of an Italian gangster family.
The film’s larger theme is something of a message from Hardwicke to Hollywood.
“Of course, I could relate to the message of a woman not being as respected as we want to be in our jobs. She’s been people-pleasing all her life when she starts realising, ‘I’m going to give the orders – that’s an order.’ I loved that arc.”
It’s an arc she understands very well.
Twenty years ago Hardwicke, then a production designer, co-wrote and directed Thirteen, a shockingly frank look at a girl’s troubled entrance into adolescence and a mother’s despair as she watches her daughter turn into someone she does not understand.
Written with the then-14-year-old Nikki Reed, who also starred alongside Evan Rachel Wood and Holly Hunter, Thirteen debuted at Sundance, where Hardwicke won the directing award for drama.