Gale Anne Hurd is one of the most successful Hollywood producers that you've probably never heard of, but I guarantee you have seen one or more of her movies. The movies this woman has produced have made a billion dollars. She is the producer of such films as The Terminator (all of the them), Aliens (the second really good one) and The Abyss. She's also a female producer in the action genre and she stands unafraid to hire female directors as she has on Aeon Flux (Karyn Kusama) and the upcoming Punisher: War Zone (Lexi Alexander).
This weekend her latest film The Incredible Hulk opened with $54.5 million.
Here are some quotes from a Variety story celebrating her career:
A production designer slated to do "Aliens" offhandedlytold her he could never work for a woman producer. She calmly shook his hand and told him she was sorry he wouldn't be working on her movie, leaving the man speechless. And fired.
Dispassion is something of a trademark for Hurd, and while she admits she will lose her temper like anyone else, she has made a conscious effort not to do so in her work.
"To some degree I think it's still a sociocultural situation," she says, "where if women lose their temper they're labeled ballbusters, or whatever, that would never be applied to a male producer.
Gale Anne Hurd dives into deep end
Gale Anne Hurd pics in the pipeline (Variety)
(photo Monsters and Critics.com)
