Early life

Miller was born in Roxbury, Connecticut, and grew up with her father, playwright Arthur Miller, and mother, Austrian-born photographer Inge Morath. Her brother, Daniel, was born in 1966. Her father was Jewish, and her mother was Protestant. For a time during childhood, Miller practiced Catholicism on her own accord. She has said that she stopped thinking of herself as a Christian "somewhere at the end of college." Miller remembered her childhood in Roxbury surrounded by artists. Sculptor Alexander Calder was a neighbor; so were choreographer Martha Clarke and members of the experimental dance troupe Pilobolus. Immersed in drawing, Miller was tutored by another neighbor, sculptor Philip Grausman.

Miller was educated at Choate Rosemary Hall. In 1980, Miller entered Yale University to study painting and literature. The author Naomi Wolf was her roommate. Miller created wooden panel triptychs she described as hybrids of pictographic forms inspired by Paul Klee and a 15th-century altarpiece. Upon her graduation in 1985, Miller went abroad, working and studying on a fellowship outside Munich, Germany. In 1987, Miller took up residence in New York City, and she showed her painting and sculpture at Leo Castelli Gallery, Victoria Munroe Gallery, and in Connecticut. Miller also studied film at the The New School. Mentored by then 92-year-old professor, photographer, cinematographer, Arnold S. Eagle, she began making non-verbal films, which she exhibited along with her sculpture.

Miller then began an acting career working with Alan Pakula, Paul Mazursky, and Mike Nichols. She landed the female lead in NBC's television movie The Murder of Mary Phagan, and supporting roles in the feature films Regarding Henry (1991) and Consenting Adults (1992). In the theater, Miller played Anya in the Peter Brooks adaptation of Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard," her first stage role in 1988, and she originated the part of Lily in "The American Plan." Yet, Miller was drawn to her role behind the camera.

In 1991, Miller wrote and directed a short film called "Florence," with actress Marcia Gay Harden, about a highly empathetic woman who acquires symptoms from others, eventually catching a neighbor's amnesia and forgetting her identity. "Florence" caught the attention of Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati. Miller was invited to direct a revival of Arthur Miller’s After the Fall (play). She also directed Nicole Burdette's play The Bluebird Special Came Through Here.

Career

Miller is a novelist, director, independent filmmaker, and an advocate for women in the film industry, and a featured filmmaker in the 2003 IFC Films documentary In The Company of Women, directed by Lesli Klainberg and Gini Reticker. In 2009, Miller was presented with the Maureen O'Hara award in recognition of her achievements in film.

Miller wrote and directed her first film, Angela (1995 film) in 1995. It is the story of a 10-year-old Angela's attempt to purge her soul of sin to cure her mentally ill mother. The film premiered at Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, and screened at Sundance Film Festival. For Angela (1995 film). Miller received the Independent Feature Project (IFP) Gotham Awards, Independent film project's Open Palm Award, and Sundance Film Festival Filmmaker Trophy, voted by her peers; cinematographer Ellen Kuras was honored at Sundance and Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film.

Miller's collection of prose portraits of women, Personal Velocity (2001, Grove Press), was a Washington Post Best Book of 2001. Personal Velocity was also the basis of Miller's 2002 award-winning feature film by the same name. Miller adapted her short stories to a screenplay for three, thematically unified short films, which she then directed. Each film explores the experience of a woman in a life-changing process of personal transformation. Miller credits the poet Honor Moore for helping her "bridge the gap between being a writer of scripts and fiction." Personal Velocity: Three Portraits screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, the High Falls Film Festival, and was successfully released through United Artists. The New York Times praised the film as "the work of a talented and highly visual writer," and Miller received the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize in 2002, and the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award and National Board of Review of Motion Pictures Special Recognition for Excellence in Filmmaking, in 2003. Cinematographer Ellen Kuras received the Excellence in Cinematography Award at Sundance. Personal Velocity: Three Portraits is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Miller is the screenwriter for the 2005 film adaptation, based on David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Proof. The film, directed by John Madden, stars Gwyneth Paltrow and Anthony Hopkins.

In 2009, Miller directed her fourth film, adapted from her 2002 novel by the same name, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. The film, starring Robin Wright, Alan Arkin, Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder and Julianne Moore, is a nuanced study of a 50-year-old woman moving into a retirement community with her 80-year-old, publisher husband. The film shifts between multiple time periods and characters, flowing back and forth between main character Pippa's memories of her freewheeling youth in 1970s New York City, and her present life. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and screened at The Lower East Side Film Festival, Ryerson University, Berlin Film Festival, and Hay Festival in 2009.

In 2003, Miller wrote and illustrated A Woman Who. The book is a collection of images of women, in a variety of scenes, each drawn by Miller with her eyes closed.

In 2005, Miller wrote and directed the film,The Ballad of Jack and Rose, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Camilla Belle and Catherine Keener. Shot in Nova Scotia and on Prince Edward Island, the film is a textured, sorrowful, coming of age story about 16-year-old Rose, having grown up in isolation with her father. The Ballad of Jack and Rose screened at the Woodstock Film Festival and IFC Center in New York. For The Ballad of Jack and Rose, Miller received Honorable Mention from MTV's 2010 The Best Female Directors Who Should Have Won An Oscar.

In 2013, Miller published the novel Jacob's Folly. This complex novel is about an 18th Century French rake reincarnated as a fly living in modern-day New York with the ability to enter the other characters’ consciousness and influence them. Critic Maureen Corrigan stated, "Miller's writing style is sensuous, and her individual stories expand, opulently, in scope and emotional impact."

Miller wrote the screenplay for an intelligent, screwball comedy Maggie's Plan, based on Karen Rinaldi's original story, and directed the film in 2015. Maggie's Plan premiered at Toronto International Film Festival Special Presentations, and screened internationally, at the New York Film Festival, Montclair Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Dublin International Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, USA Film Festival/ Angelika Film Center Dallas, Denver Film Critics Society Women+Film Festival Miami International Film Festival, and Sundance Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics distributed Maggie's Plan in theaters. The ensemble cast includes Greta Gerwig, Julianne Moore, Ethan Hawke, Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph. Critic Richard Lawson praised the film as "A smart, goofy delight!"

Personal life

Miller first met her future husband, actor Daniel Day-Lewis, on set during the production of the film adaption of the elder Miller's play The Crucible. Miller and Day-Lewis were married on November 13, 1996, and have three sons, Ronan (b. 1998) and Cashel (b. 2002), and Miller's step-son, Gabriel Kane Day-Lewis (b. 1995).

Filmography

Producer

• Maggie's Plan (2015)

Director/Screenwriter

• Angela (1995)
• Personal Velocity: Three Portraits (2002)
• The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005)
• The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009)
• Maggie's Plan (2015)

Screenwriter

• Proof (2005)

Actress

• The Murder of Mary Phagan (1988, TV)... Lucille Frank
• The Seven Minutes (film) (1989)... Anneliese
• Regarding Henry (1991)... Linda
• Wind (1992)... Abigail Weld
• Consenting Adults (1992)... Kay Otis
• The Pickle (1993)... Carrie
• The American Clock (1993, TV mini-series)... Edie
• Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994)... Neysa McMein
• Love Affair (1994)... Receptionist

Bibliography

• Miller, R. (2001). Personal velocity. New York: Grove Press.
• Miller, R. (2008). The private lives of Pippa Lee. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Miller, R. (2003). A woman who. London: Bloomsbury.
• Miller, R. (2005). The ballad of Jack and Rose. New York: Faber and Faber.
• Miller, R. (2014). Jacob's folly. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]