Campion, Jane 1954-
New Zealand film director

Born in Wellington, she was trained at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in Sydney, Australia, and her debut short, Peel (1982), won the Cannes Palme D'Or for Best Short Film. Her first feature-length piece, Two Friends (1986) was for Australian television, and she made her feature film debut with Sweetie (1989), a character study of a schizophrenic. She then made the three-part television series An Angel At My Table (1990), a dramatization of the autobiographies of Janet Frame. She won seven awards at the Venice Film Festival of 1990, and shared the Cannes Palme D'Or for The Piano (1993), the first such award for an Australian production as well as for a woman director. The film also secured her an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In 1996 she directed Portrait of a Lady, adapted from the novel by Henry James.