Andrea Arnold, OBE (born 5 April 1961) is an English filmmaker and former actress, who made her feature film directorial debut in 2006 with Red Road.

Personal life

Arnold was born on 5 April 1961 in Dartford, Kent,the eldest of four children. She was born when her mother was only 16 years old and her father was 17, and they separated when she was very young. Her mother had to bring up all four children alone, which is reminiscent of Arnold's own directorial debuted short, Wasp. When people are asked if the story is in any way biographical, Arnold replies "I grew up in a working class family, so I guess you could say I write from what I know."

As a young girl, she was writing dark stories about human experience. In an interview, Arnold speaks about how when she was a mere 10 years old, she wrote her first play that expressed her "horror" of the slave trade, and a few years later while studying for a dance GCSE, she made a performance piece; "I took quotes from the Diary of Anne Frank and read them aloud as I moved around the room. All the other kids would just bung on some pop music and dance. I remember the examiners sitting there looking at me, perplexed." Arnold left high school when she was 16, when she was drawn to becoming an actress. When Arnold was 18 years old she left Kent for London where she began working as a host and actress for a children's TV show called "No. 73". She worked in TV for the next 10 years, while continually writing on the side. She began scripting her youth oriented environmental series titled A Beetle Called Derek in the mid-1990s, where she began to yearn to direct. Arnold realised she could turn her stories into films, so she studied at the American Film Institute of Los Angeles where she gained experience in the film industry. After finishing school and returning to Britain she had her daughter, Coral and began making short films for TV.