Jane Campion

Born: April 30 1954
Where: Wellington, New Zealand

The Kiwi film-maker is best known for her Oscar-winning The Piano, one of the most acclaimed films to have emerged from Down Under.

Along with Australian directors Gillian Armstrong, Jocelyn Moorhouse and Shirley Barrett, Campion has emerged as a major feminist filmmaker.

Her features all have one thing in common: a powerful, courageous woman as a central figure.

From Genevieve Lemon's unhinged Sweetie to Kerry Fox's mentally troubled Janet Frame in An Angel at My Table to Holly Hunter's mute Ada in The Piano, the lead always provides a showcase for the actress.

Born to theatrical parents (her father was a director, her mother, an actress), Campion displayed an early interest in art and was an accomplished artist.

Although interested in acting, Campion studied anthropology in college and later ventured to Europe where she studied art in Venice.

Migrating to London, she found work as an assistant to a director of commercials and documentaries before she moved to Australia.

Enrolling in art school, Campion began to experiment with film and shot her first short - Tissues - about a father who had been arrested for child molestation.

Furthering her education at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, Campion went on to complete several award-winning shorts, including Peel.

After marking time in the Women's Film Unit (where she made After Hours and Two Friends)Campion made her feature debut with the darkly stylish Sweetie.

The disturbing study told of of familial tensions brought about by a mentally unstable young woman.

Campion's second feature An Angel at My Table was originally intended as a TV-movie.

Working from an adaptation of the autobiography of New Zealand writer Janet Frame, the director fashioned a biopic that detailed an unconventional story.

She traced Frame from her awkward childhood through a nervous breakdown and stay in a mental institutions to her eventual fulfillment as a writer.

In 1984, fresh out of film school, Campion began working on a screenplay about New Zealand's colonial past which was to become The Piano.

A mute woman (Holly Hunter) enters into an arranged marriage and moves halfway around the world with her illegitimate daughter (Anna Paquin) and her piano.

Her new husband (Sam Neill) refuses to transport the instrument and sells it to a settler gone native (Harvey Keitel) who refused to return it until she teaches him to play.

The Gothic drama earned numerous awards, including the Palme d'Or at Cannes (the first for a woman director)and she was also nominated for a best director Oscar.

Campion did win an Oscar for best screenplay as did Hunter for Best Actress and Paquin for Best Supporting Actress.

Critics were divided over Campion's long awaited follow-up: an adaptation of Henry James' novel The Portrait of a Lady starring Nicole Kidman.

They were also less than enthusiastic about her satire of a religious cult - Holy Smoke - starring Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel.

However, she was back on firmer ground with In The Cut, an erotic crime thriller that resuscitates Meg Ryan's career.