Australian director and screenwriter Jane Campion (born 1954) created a number of films with strong female protagonists starting in the late 1980s. Among the best known of her works was the Academy-award-winning film The Piano (1993).

Campion was born on April 30, 1954, in Wellington, New Zealand, the daughter of Richard Campion and Edith Armstrong. Her father was a theater director and her mother was an actress. They had met when both were students at the Old Vic in England. Together, they co-founded the New Zealand Players. Campion was raised in Wellington, with her older sister, Anna, with whom she would later collaborate, and her younger brother, Michael.

While Campion was interested in acting, she did not immediately follow the family tradition. Instead, she attended Victoria University in Wellington and earned a bachelor's degree in structural anthropology. She then went to Europe where she studied art in Venice, among other places. Eventually...