Susanna White (born 1956 (age 52) ) is a British television and film director. She spent 12 years making documentaries for BBC2, but is best known for directing the BBC mini-series Jane Eyre, HBO miniseries Generation Kill, and Disney+ Star Wars series Andor. She has won multiple awards, including one BAFTA Television Award, and received numerous nominations, including nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards and two BAFTA Awards.

Early life and education

Susanna White was born in England in 1961 (age 48). She first became interested in films at eight years old and asked her parents to buy her a Super 8 film camera. One source reports that she said that the inspiration came from when she visited the set of the BBC children's TV show Crackerjack, but she wrote in 2010 that it was after her father took her to see Doctor Dolittle with Rex Harrison that she asked for the camera. She read English at Oxford University, and then won a Fulbright scholarship to study film at UCLA.

Career

After graduation, White spent 12 years making documentaries for BBC2. In 1999, she failed to win a place on a BBC training scheme and was turned down for a BBC drama director trainee course. In 2001, she was supported by BBC2 controller Jane Root, who eased her into drama with a £200,000 budget drama for BBC2, Love Again, about Philip Larkin. She said in 2010 that it was seeing Jane Campion's 1993 film The Piano at a cinema on King's Road that inspired her to become a maker of feature films rather than documentaries. White won a BAFTA award for best drama serial for her work on the 2005 version of Bleak House. She directed the BBC mini-series Jane Eyre, for which she was nominated for an Emmy award. She also directed four episodes of the HBO miniseries Generation Kill, and all five episodes of the 2012 series Parade's End. In film, White directed Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang and most recently Our Kind of Traitor. White directed three episodes of the Disney+ Star Wars series Andor, which were released in 2022. She is directing the film version of Australian playwright Suzie Miller's award-winning play Prima Facie, in pre-production. The film stars Cynthia Erivo as Tessa, the only role in the stage version.

Personal life

White and her husband, an Oxford academic and part-time dairy farmer, live on a dairy farm in Sussex with their twin daughters.

Awards and nominations

Filmography

Film

Television