Chloé Zhao facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Chloé Zhao
Chloé Zhao at the 2026 Berlinale
Born	Zhao Ting (1982-03-31) 31 March 1982 (age 44) Beijing, China
Education	Mount Holyoke College (Bachelor's Degree) New York University (Master's Degree in Film)
Occupation	Film director screenwriter film producer film editor
Years active	2008–present
Awards	Full list
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese	赵婷
Traditional Chinese	趙婷
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Zhào Tíng Wade–Giles Chao4 T'ing2
Signature

Chloé Zhao, whose birth name is Zhao Ting (born March 31, 1982), is a talented filmmaker from China. She is famous for making unique and personal movies, often called independent films. In 2020, her movie Nomadland earned her an amazing achievement: she became only the second woman ever to win the Academy Award for Best Director.

Her first full-length movie, Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015), was shown at the Sundance Film Festival and received great reviews. Her next film, The Rider (2017), was also highly praised.

Chloé Zhao became famous worldwide with the American film Nomadland (2020). She wrote, produced, edited, and directed this movie. It won many awards, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. For Nomadland, Chloé was nominated for four Academy Awards. She won Best Picture and Best Director, becoming the first woman of color to win the directing award. She also won directing awards at the Directors Guild of America Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and British Academy Film Awards. She was the second woman to win each of these awards.

Chloé also helped write and directed the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero movie Eternals (2021). Her 2025 film, Hamnet, was shown at the 52nd Telluride Film Festival and received excellent reviews. It won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama in 2025 and the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Film. It was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Early Life and Education

Chloé Zhao was born Zhao Ting on March 31, 1982, in Beijing, China. Her father, Zhao Yuji, was a successful leader at a big steel company in China. He later became involved in real estate and investments. Her stepmother, Song Dandan, is a famous Chinese actress known for her roles in TV comedies, especially Home with Kids.

Chloé was a curious child who loved Western movies and music. She wasn't very interested in school in Beijing, preferring to focus on art and her own hobbies. As a teenager, she said she was a "rebellious and lazy student." She enjoyed drawing comics and writing stories more than schoolwork. Movies by Wong Kar-wai, like Happy Together, really inspired her. When she was a teenager, her parents divorced, and her father married Song Dandan. At 15, in 1998, her parents sent her to Brighton College in England, even though she was still learning English. In 2000, she moved to Los Angeles alone and went to Los Angeles High School. Later, she studied politics and film at Mount Holyoke College, finishing in 2005.

After college, Chloé worked different jobs. She discovered she loved meeting people and hearing their stories. This inspired her to go to film school. She realized she was more interested in people's lives than in politics. In 2010, she joined the film program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. There, she learned from famous director Spike Lee. Chloé said she liked that Lee was very direct and honest with his students, which she felt was helpful for her.

Filmmaking Career Highlights

Zhao in 2015

Chloé's first short film, The Atlas Mountains (2009), told the story of a woman and an immigrant worker. In 2010, while studying at New York University, she made another short film called Daughters. This film was about a 14-year-old girl in rural China who tries to escape an arranged marriage. Daughters won awards at the Palm Springs International Short Fest and the Cinequest Film Festival.

Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015)

In 2015, Chloé's first full-length movie, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. This movie was filmed on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. It showed the bond between a Lakota Sioux man and his younger sister. Chloé worked with people who actually lived on the reservation. She used their real-life stories to help create the movie, making it feel very authentic. Chloé felt a connection to the story because she also left her home country to study abroad.

Critics praised the film for its personal storytelling and how it showed Lakota Sioux life. After Sundance, it was also shown at the Cannes Film Festival. It was nominated for the Best First Feature award at the Independent Spirit Awards.

The Rider (2017)

In 2017, Chloé directed The Rider, a modern cowboy movie. It tells the story of a young cowboy who has a serious accident that stops him from riding professionally. He then has to figure out who he is without his riding career. Chloé's father, Yuji Zhao, helped produce the film. Like her first movie, she cast real people who lived on a ranch, not professional actors. The movie was praised for being a fresh take on the classic Western genre, bringing a new viewpoint from Chloé as someone who moved from China.

The film was first shown at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Art Cinema Award. Chloé was nominated for Best Feature and Best Director at the Independent Spirit Awards. She also won the first-ever Bonnie Award, which celebrates female directors in the middle of their careers. The Rider was released in April 2018 and received great reviews. A critic from The Boston Globe said the film showed a world with such accuracy and feeling that it connected with everyone.

Zhao in 2019

Nomadland (2020)

In 2018, Chloé directed Nomadland, starring famous actress Frances McDormand. The movie was based on a non-fiction book by Jessica Bruder. It was filmed over four months and featured many real people who live a nomadic lifestyle, traveling and working. Some of the people interviewed for the book even played themselves in the movie. Chloé and Frances McDormand met at an awards show in 2018, where they hinted they might work together.

Nomadland was first shown at the Venice Film Festival, where it was highly praised and won the Golden Lion award. It also won the People's Choice Award at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. The movie was released in February 2021. Chloé won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director for Nomadland. This made her the first woman of Asian heritage and only the second woman ever to win a Golden Globe for directing. In April 2021, Chloé also won the Academy Award for Best Director, becoming the second woman in history to achieve this.

Eternals (2021)

In September 2018, Marvel Studios hired Chloé to direct Eternals, based on the comic book characters. The film follows the events of the 2019 Marvel movie Avengers: Endgame. It features a new team of superheroes who must come together to fight an ancient enemy of humanity. Chloé mentioned that movies like Ridley Scott's Prometheus and Nick Cassavetes' The Notebook influenced her work on Eternals. The movie was released on November 5, 2021. Chloé was one of the four writers for the film, along with Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, and Kaz Firpo. Eternals received mixed reviews from critics. However, it still earned $161.7 million during its first weekend and became the number one movie at the box office. Critics noticed Chloé's efforts to bring her realistic visual style into a superhero movie.

Recent Projects

In 2023, Chloé was an executive producer for the film The Graduates, directed by Hannah Peterson.

In April 2023, it was announced that Chloé would direct a movie based on the novel Hamnet. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal were in talks to star. The film premiered at the 52nd Telluride Film Festival to great reviews. It later played at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the People's Choice Award. This made Chloé the first director to win this award twice.

In February 2025, Chloé was announced as the director for the pilot episode of a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer series for Hulu. However, on March 14, 2026, the project was canceled after the pilot episode was filmed.

Filmmaking Style and Techniques

Human Connection and Realism

Chloé's films often explore themes like feelings of being alone, finding who you are, moving to new places, and wanting to belong. Her characters are usually ordinary people in everyday life. She films them using natural light and real locations, making her fictional stories feel very real, almost like documentaries. She believes filmmakers tell stories to connect with others and focuses on showing authentic, true-to-life experiences.

Actress Frances McDormand said that Chloé is "basically like a journalist." She gets to know people's stories and creates characters from them. Frances added that Chloé "knows how to show real feelings without being overly emotional." Chloé once said, "My goal is to put the camera inside of [the character]." This means she wants the audience to feel what the character feels. For example, in Eternals, she saw a connection between actors Lauren Ridloff and Barry Keoghan. She then wrote their interactions into the film, just like she did with Nomadland and The Rider.

Chloé's realistic style was also influenced by Andrea Arnold's movie Wuthering Heights. She admired how its characters interacted with their surroundings. For fantasy worlds, she loves The Lord of the Rings movies. She praises their beautiful landscapes and how they make you feel like you're really there. These influences help explain why she often places her characters within their environments, allowing emotions and settings to work together.

A Woman's Perspective

Chloé's directing style also uses a woman's perspective, often called the female gaze. In a 2023 interview, she explained that everyone has both feminine and masculine strengths. She feels that in society and the film industry, masculine qualities are often praised more. She believes this can be difficult for both women and men. When directing her characters, she tries to help them connect with their feminine side. She also believes it's important to show the gentle or sensitive side of her male characters, which she sees as part of the true female gaze.

Influences on Chloé Zhao

Chloé says that Wong Kar-wai's romance film Happy Together was "the film that made me want to make films." She was also influenced by Spike Lee, who was her film professor at New York University. She looks up to Ang Lee, saying his career is inspiring because he brings his background to all his movies. She has also mentioned Werner Herzog and Terrence Malick as important influences. In January 2026, Chloé shared that Terrence Malick called her, even though they had never met. She told him she felt like she was part of his storytelling "lineage." Some of the first American movies she saw were The Terminator, Ghost, and Sister Act.

Personal Life

Until 2025, Chloé was in a relationship with cinematographer Joshua James Richards. They also worked together on many of her films. Richards and Chloé met when she was researching her first movie, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, and Richards was a film student. As of 2021, Chloé lived in Ojai, California.

Chloé considers herself to be neurodivergent, which she describes as a "superpower."

She has also shared that she played "hours and hours" of The Sims video game series. She said she "would just control everything" in the game to help her "regulate" herself.

Filmography

Feature films

Short films

Television

Commercials

• A Clydesdale's Journey (2022) for Budweiser
• Diablo IV: Saviors Wanted (2023) for Blizzard Entertainment

Awards and Nominations

Chloé's short film Daughters (2010) won First Place Student Live Action Short at the 2010 Palm Springs International Short Fest and a Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Cinequest Film Festival. In 2021, her film Nomadland (2020) won the Academy Award for Best Picture and the Academy Award for Best Director. Nomadland also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, the BAFTA Award for Best Direction, the BAFTA Award for Best Film, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Editing, the Critic's Choice Movie Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and the Critic's Choice Movie Award for Best Director.

In December 2024, Chloé Zhao was included on the BBC's 100 Women list, which recognizes inspiring women from around the world.

See also

In Spanish: Chloé Zhao para niños