Dame Elizabeth Jane Campion DNZM (born 30 April 1954) is a New Zealand screenwriter, producer, and director. Campion is the second of five women ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and is the first—and thus far, only—female filmmaker in history to receive the Palme d\'Or, which she received for directing the acclaimed film The Piano (1993), for which she also won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.\n', '

Campion was born in Wellington, New Zealand, the second daughter of Edith (née Beverley Georgette Hannah), an actress, writer, and heiress, and Richard M. Campion, a theatre and opera director. Her maternal great-grandfather was Robert Hannah, the shoe manufacturer of Antrim House. Her father was from a family of Exclusive Brethren. With her older sister, Anna, born a year and half before her, and brother, Michael, born seven years after, Campion grew up in the world of New Zealand theatre. Her parents founded the New Zealand Players theatre group. Initially rejecting the idea of a career in theatre or acting, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from Victoria University of Wellington in 1975.\n', '

In 1976 Campion attended Chelsea Art School in London and travelled throughout Europe. She graduated with a Graduate Diploma in Visual Arts (Painting) from the Sydney College of the Arts at the University of Sydney in 1981. Based on her education at art school, Campion cites surrealist painter Frida Kahlo and sculptor Joseph Beuys as influences on her art. Dissatisfied with the limits of painting as a medium, Campion turned to film and created her first short film, Tissues in 1980. In 1981 she began studying at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, where she made several more short films, and graduated in 1984.\n', '

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