http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/movies/queen_of_the_world_jb0wP5Abv7plMDIYQiWLiP
She was a starving NYC artist who worked in construction to pay the rent, she
climbs mountains, and she’s dating a guy 21 years her junior. Meet Kathryn
Bigelow, the baddest dude in Hollywood.
Kathryn Bigelow sounds less like a director and more like a hero from a 1930s
pulp novel. She has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in freezing temperatures. She once
went diving in Fiji, lost her weight belt and nearly died. She is an expert
rider of horses. She once stopped a bank robbery with nothing more than a hard
stare.
Sorry, no. That last one was probably The Shadow.
But there’s no denying that Bigelow is Hollywood’s biggest badass.
Back in the 1970s when Bigelow was a young artist living in New York City, she
made ends meet — not by waiting tables or working a cushy retail job, but by
doing construction. (Oddly, she toiled alongside composer Philip Glass, whose
specialty was plumbing.)
“She was very good with her hands, but everybody had to be in those days or else
you didn’t eat,” says noted conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner, with whom Bigelow
worked in the 1970s. “She didn’t like [construction], but she did it.”
“She was living rough in places, like all of us were,” Weiner says.
“She lived down by the waterfront [by the South Street Seaport] and on Greene
Street for a while.”
Even when she became a successful movie director, she never became a diva and
demanded the good life. Conditions on the set of “The Hurt Locker,” filmed in
the sweltering desert outside Amman, Jordan, were somewhat grim. And that’s
being charitable. Temperatures reaching 115 degrees. Sandstorms. Windstorms.
Flies everywhere. Nobody on-set got an air-conditioned trailer or a private
bathroom. Instead, they took breaks in Bedouin tents pitched on the scorching
sand.
The hardship paid off. Critics praised “The Hurt Locker” for its rawness and
realism, and the movie went on to win big at Sunday’s Oscars, taking home
statues for Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Director.
And Bigelow’s achievements don’t end there. She also snagged an Oscar-winning
boyfriend 21 years her junior. Her current beau is 37-year-old Mark Boal, a
journalist and “The Hurt Locker” screenwriter whom Bigelow first met while
working on the short-lived 2005 cop series “The Inside.”
Growing up near San Francisco, Bigelow was a bit of a tomboy. She liked riding
horses and being outside — pastimes she continues to enjoy today. She often
spends a couple of hours a day hiking through the hills near her Beverly Hills
mansion, and if you saw the 58-year-old’s arms on Sunday (yes, she’s 58!), you
can guess she works out religiously.
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