Jennifer Yuh Nelson

Biography

Yuh was born in 1972 in South Korea and immigrated to the United States with her parents and two sisters when she was four years old. She started sketching and drawing at a young age, while developing an interest in 1980s action movies and anime. Her favorite filmmakers were James Cameron, Ridley Scott, and Katsuhiro Otomo. Yuh spent her childhood in Lakewood, California, where she enjoyed watching martial arts movies, playing with cars, and drawing. "I have been drawing since age 3 and making movies in my head for almost as long. In fact, drawing for me was a way to express those films when I had no other means of doing so," said Yuh. As a young girl, she would sit at the kitchen table for hours and watch her mother draw, copying her every stroke. As a kid, she would fancy stories with her sisters and was learning to draw to get down those stories. Yuh traces the lineage of her career to those formative family experiences.

Interested in art, Yuh followed her sisters to California State University, Long Beach, where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration. There she got introduced to animation, "When I was in college years later, a veteran storyboard artist came to talk to my class. He showed us how he drew movies for a living. My mind exploded. And that led to a career in animation." she was later hired as a storyboard artist on HBO's Todd McFarlane's Spawn series in 1997.

In 1998, Yuh joined DreamWorks Animation as a storyboard artist, where she worked on Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, and Madagascar. As a big fan of martial arts movies, she asked to work on the first Kung Fu Panda film, where she served as head of story and director of the opening hand-drawn dream sequence. Although she hadn't expressed interest in directing the sequel to the film, Producer Melissa Cobb stated that she should direct the second film due to her excellent work on the first, to which the rest of the crew supported the decision. The film proved a major critical and international box office success with a worldwide gross of $665.6 million, making it the highest-grossing film ever directed by a woman until director Jennifer Lee's Frozen two years later. She held the record for highest-grossing film by a solo female director until the release of Patty Jenkins' 2017 film Wonder Woman. She eventually became the first woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film (since 2007's Persepolis) and to win the Annie Award for Best Directing in a Feature Production. Yuh returned to co-direct Kung Fu Panda 3 alongside Alessandro Carloni, which was released in 2016. In July 2016, she was also added as one of the board of Governors by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In 2016, Yuh announced that she would be making her live action directorial debut with an adaptation of Alexandra Bracken's The Darkest Minds for 20th Century Fox. Producer Shawn Levy praised Yuh for her visual sensibility as well as her natural narrative qualities. She described herself as soft-spoken, contrary to what contemporary directors are often personified as; instead, she used storyboards to help pitch her ideas to Shawn Levy and 21 Laps.

In June 2019, Yuh was hired as supervising director of the second season of the Netflix animated anthology series, Love, Death & Robots.

Filmography

Director

Film

Television

Other credits

Film

Television

Direct-to-video

Awards and nominations

• Annie Award for Best Storyboarding in an Animated Feature Production at 36th Annie Awards
• Annie Award for Best Directing in an Animated Feature Production at 39th Annie Awards
• Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming More Than One Hour) at 51st Primetime Emmy Awards
• Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Animated Program at 73rd Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards
• Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Animated Program at 74th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards
• Maverick Award at 2011 LA Femme International Film Festival
• Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature
• KoreAm Award for Director of the Year
• In May 2023, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from her alma mater, California State University, Long Beach.

References

References

1. "Yuh, Jennifer". Library of Congress.
2. Yuh Nelson, Jennifer. "TIME Firsts Women Leaders: Jennifer Yuh Nelson". [[Time (magazine).
3. (2017). "The Routledge Companion to Asian American Media". Taylor & Francis.
4. (April 18, 2011). "JENNIFER YUH NELSON • DREAMWORKS". WomenWorthWatching.com.
5. Hulett, Steve. (January 23, 2012). "The Jennifer Yuh Nelson Interview -- Part I". The Animation Guild Blog.
6. Sperling, Nicole. (May 25, 2011). "Tough enough". [[Los Angeles Times]].
7. (August 14, 2018). "Darkest Minds director Jennifer Yuh Nelson is a quiet force making history in Hollywood". [[NBCUniversal]] Media, LLC.
8. Nusair, David. "Jennifer Yuh Bio". About.com.
9. (May 31, 2011). "Interview with KUNG FU PANDA 2 Director Jennifer Yuh Nelson". CineMovie.tv.
10. (January 25, 2016). "Q&A with Jennifer Yuh Nelson".
11. Young, John. (August 29, 2011). "'Kung Fu Panda 2' becomes highest-grossing film directed by a woman". Entertainment Weekly.
12. "Academy Appoints Jennifer Yuh Nelson Governor At Large".
13. Nordine, Michael. (July 12, 2016). "'Darkest Minds': Jennifer Yuh Nelson of 'Kung Fu Panda' to Make Live-Action Directorial Debut with Ya Adaptation". Indiewire.
14. Barker, Andrew. (July 26, 2018). "Billion Dollar Filmmaker: Jennifer Yuh Nelson Moves From Toontown to 'Darkest' Side". Variety.
15. (June 10, 2019). "'Love, Death and Robots' Renewed at Netflix, Adds 'Kung Fu Panda 3' Director". [[The Hollywood Reporter]].