By: HISTORY.com Editors

2010

Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first female director to win an Oscar

Published: May 09, 2011Last Updated: January 31, 2025

On March 7, 2010, Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win an Academy Award for best director, for her movie The Hurt Locker, about an American bomb squad that disables explosives in Iraq in 2004. Prior to Bigelow, only three women had been nominated for a best director Oscar: Lina Wertmueller for Seven Beauties (1975), Jane Campion for The Piano (1993) and Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation (2003).

Born in San Carlos, California, in 1951, Bigelow graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1972 and later earned a master’s degree in film from Columbia University. She made her feature film debut with The Loveless (1982), which she co-wrote and co-directed. The film, about a motorcycle gang, starred Willem Dafoe. The next movie Bigelow directed, Near Dark (1987), was a western-horror hybrid that gained a cult following. She went on to helm Blue Steel (1990), starring Jamie Lee Curtis as a police officer stalked by a killer, and Point Break (1991), about bank-robbing surfers, featuring Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. Bigelow’s other directing credits include Strange Days (1995); The Weight of Water (2000); K-19: The Widowmaker (2002); Zero Dark Thirty (2012); and Detroit (2017).

Academy Award Winners Who Rejected Their Oscars

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By: Becky Little

At the 82nd Academy Awards in March 2010, Bigelow’s fellow best-director nominees included James Cameron (Avatar), whom she was married to from 1989 to 1991, along with Lee Daniels (Precious), Jason Reitman (Up in the Air) and Quentin Tarantino (Inglorious Basterds). After making history by winning the directing prize, Bigelow said, “I hope I’m the first of many [women], and of course, I’d love to just think of myself as a filmmaker. And I long for the day when that modifier can be a moot point.” Her movie The Hurt Locker, which starred Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty, also won Oscars for best picture, film editing, sound editing, sound mixing and original screenplay.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on March 7th

1777

Five letters pass between Abigail and John Adams

On March 7, 1777, Continental Congressman John Adams writes three letters to and receives two letters from his wife, Abigail. He is with Congress in Philadelphia, while she maintains their farm in Braintree, Massachusetts. The remarkable correspondence between Abigail and John Adams—numbering 1,160 letters in total—covered topics ranging from politics and military strategy to household […]

1:28m read

1862

Battle of Pea Ridge (Elkhorn Tavern), Arkansas

On March 7, 1862, Union forces under General Samuel Curtis clash with the army of General Earl Van Dorn at the Battle of Pea Ridge (also called the Battle of Elkhorn Tavern),in northwest Arkansas. The following day, the battle ended in defeat for the Confederates. Pea Ridge was part of a larger campaign for control […]

1:58m read

1876

Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone

On March 7, 1876, 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for his revolutionary new invention: the telephone. The Scottish-born Bell worked in London with his father, Melville Bell, who developed Visible Speech, a written system used to teach speaking to the deaf. In the 1870s, the Bells moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where the younger […]

1:34m read

1923

Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is published

The New Republic publishes Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” The poem, beginning with the famous line “Whose woods these are, I think I know. His house is in the village though,” has introduced millions of American students to poetry. Like most of Frost’s poetry, “Stopping by Woods” adopts the tone […]

1:46m read

1936

Hitler reoccupies the Rhineland, violating the Treaty of Versailles

Nazi leader Adolf Hitler violates the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact by sending German military forces into the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone along the Rhine River in western Germany. The Treaty of Versailles, signed in July 1919—eight months after the guns fell silent in World War I—called for stiff war reparation payments and […]

1941

British forces arrive in Greece

On March 7, 1941, a British expeditionary force from North Africa lands in Greece. In October 1940, Mussolini’s army, already occupying Albania, invaded Greece in what proved to be a disastrous military campaign for the Duce’s forces. Mussolini surprised everyone with this move against Greece, but he was not to be upstaged by recent Nazi […]

1:34m read

1965

Civil rights protesters beaten in ‘Bloody Sunday’ attack

On March 7, 1965, in Selma, Alabama, a peaceful 600-person civil rights demonstration ends in violence when marchers are attacked and beaten by white members of police.

1:40m read

1988

Writers Guild of America strike begins

After rejecting what the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) said was a final offer, representatives of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) called a strike for all the union’s members to begin at 9 a.m. Pacific Time on March 7, 1988. The origins of the strike went back to late 1987, when […]

2:06m read

1999

Stanley Kubrick dies

On March 7, 1999, American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick dies in Hertfordshire, England, at the age of 70. One of the most acclaimed film directors of the 20th century, Kubrick’s 13 feature films explored the dark side of human nature. Born in New York City in 1928, Kubrick took up photography in high school and became […]

2:56m read

2002

Defense rests in Andrea Yates trial

The defense rests in the trial of Andrea Yates, a 37-year-old Texas woman who confessed to killing her five young children by drowning them in a bathtub. Less than a week later, on March 13, Yates was convicted and sentenced to life in prison; however, her conviction was later reversed. Andrea Pia Kennedy was born […]

2:12m read

Arts & Entertainment

42 videos

Arts & Entertainment

The True Story of the Real-Life Winnie-the-Pooh

A real-life black bear owned by a Canadian soldier serving in World War I inspired the famous children’s book.

Arts & Entertainment

How ‘Who’s on First?’ Became a Classic Comedy Routine

Abbott and Costello turned a simple baseball misunderstanding into one of the most famous comedy routines of all time.

Arts & Entertainment

Lucille Ball: 6 Surprising Facts About Her Life and Career

The star of ‘I Love Lucy’ was also a pioneering force behind the camera.

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