Early life

Leder was born in New York City in 1952, the daughter of Etyl, a classical pianist, and Paul Leder, a director, producer, actor, writer, and editor. Mimi was raised in Los Angeles, in a Jewish home. During childhood, her father, a low-budget independent filmmaker, introduced Mimi and her siblings to film production. Having worked for the majority of her life in film gave her the skill and confidence to be the first woman accepted into the American Film Institute. She studied cinematography but enjoyed working with actors and telling stories.

Film career

Leder began her career as a script supervisor on a string of films, including Spawn of the Slithis (1978), Dummy (1979), The Boy Who Drank Too Much (1980), and A Long Way Home (1980), before moving on to the TV series Hill Street Blues (1981). After making a short film, Short Order Dreams, written and funded by her father Paul, she screened it for Steven Bochco, creator of Hill Street Blues, and his friend Gregory Hoblit who hired her to direct an episode of L.A. Law.

In 1988 Leder went on to direct episodes of Crime Story, The Bronx Zoo, Midnight Caller, before getting hired to direct several episodes of China Beach (1988-91) for which she was nominated for four Emmys. She decided to make a few made-for-TV films, Woman with a Past (1992), House of Secrets (1993), and Baby Brokers (1994) before getting hired as one of the core directors for ER (1994-2009). She made proficient use of her cinematography background and the Steadicam to create high energy scenes that moved around the corridors and rooms of the hospital. The show earned her Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series in 1995 and 1996. She returned to direct an episode of the series during its final season in 2009. She was receiving much attention and soon received a job offer from Steven Spielberg to direct the film The Peacemaker (1997), an action-adventure film that she has said she sees as a drama. Leder became one of only a handful of woman directors to break into the action genre, and her assignment to this film generated much press about the opportunities for women directors in Hollywood. She studied trains and other visual effects to prepare herself for the film and is proud of the results.

Continuing to work for DreamWorks, she directed Deep Impact (1998) and Pay It Forward (2000) while simultaneously creating a personal love story about her parents, Sentimental Journey (1999). Since then, Leder has been moving back and forth between television and film, executive producing and/or directing such television series as The Beast (2001), John Doe (2002), Jonny Zero (2005), and Vanished (2006), and films or made-for-TV movies such as Thick as Thieves (2009), U.S. Attorney (2009), and Heavenly (2011).

In 2011, she was named as director for a proposed remake of the film All Quiet on the Western Front.

Personal life

Leder has one daughter, Hannah, with her husband actor Gary Werntz.

Filmography

Feature films

Year	Title
1997	The Peacemaker
1998	Deep Impact
1999	Sentimental Journey
2000	Pay It Forward
2009	Thick as Thieves

Television

Year	Title	Credited as		Notes
		Director	Producer
1987	L.A. Law	Yes
1988	A Year in the Life	Yes
	Crime Story	Yes
	The Bronx Zoo	Yes
	Nightingales	Yes		TV movie
	Midnight Caller	Yes
1990	Sisters	Yes
1988-1991	China Beach	Yes	Yes	Director (13 episodes, 1988-1991) Producer (22 episodes, 1989-1990) Supervising producer (16 episodes, 1990-1991)
1991	A Little Piece of Heaven	Yes		TV movie
1992	Woman with a Past	Yes		TV movie
1993	Marked for Murder	Yes		TV movie
	There Was a Little Boy	Yes		TV movie
	Rio Shannon	Yes		TV movie
	House of Secrets	Yes		TV movie
1994	Baby Brokers	Yes		TV movie
	The Innocent	Yes		TV movie
2001	The Beast	Yes	Yes	Executive producer
2002-2003	John Doe	Yes	Yes	Executive producer
2005	Jonny Zero	Yes	Yes	Executive producer
2006	The West Wing	Yes
	Related	Yes
	Vanished	Yes	Yes	Executive producer
1994-2009	ER	Yes	Yes	Director (11 episodes, 1994-2009) Supervising producer (14 episodes, 1994-1995) Co-executive producer (11 episodes, 1995)
2009	U.S. Attorney	Yes	Yes	TV movie, Executive producer
2010	The Quinn-tuplets	Yes		TV movie
	Human Target	Yes
2011	Heavenly	Yes		TV movie
2011-2012	Shameless	Yes
2012	Smash	Yes
	Luck	Yes
2014-present	The Leftovers	Yes	Yes	Executive Producer

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Category	Nominated work	Result
1990	Emmy Award	Outstanding Drama Series	China Beach	Nominated
1991	American Film Institute	Franklin J. Schaffner Award		Won
	Emmy Award	Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series	China Beach	Nominated
	Emmy Award	Outstanding Drama Series	China Beach	Nominated
1992	Emmy Award	Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series	China Beach	Nominated
1995	Emmy Award	Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series	ER	Won
	Emmy Award	Outstanding Drama Series	ER	Nominated
	Directors Guild of America Award	Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series	ER	Nominated
1996	Directors Guild of America Award	Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series	ER	Nominated
	Emmy Award	Outstanding Drama Series	ER	Won
	Emmy Award	Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series	ER	Nominated
1997	Directors Guild of America Award	Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series	ER	Nominated
2000	Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Awards	Dorothy Arzner Award		Won
2006	Emmy Award	Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series	The West Wing	Nominated

[ Source: Wikipedia ]