Kimberly Ane Peirce (born September 8, 1967) is an American filmmaker, best known for her debut feature film, Boys Don't Cry (1999), which won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Hilary Swank's performance. Her second feature, Stop-Loss, was released by Paramount Pictures in 2008. Her film Carrie was released on October 18, 2013. She is a governor of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and a National Board member of the Directors Guild of America. Early life and education Peirce was born on September 8, 1967, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to Sherry and Robert A. Peirce (originally Materazzi), who owned a construction company. When Peirce was three, she moved to New York City, and at age eleven she moved to Miami, Florida, where she eventually graduated from Miami Sunset Senior High School. While attending the University of Chicago, Peirce moved to Kobe, Japan for two years to work as a photographer and teach English, and then to New York City to work as a photography intern for Time magazine under photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt. She then returned to the University of Chicago to graduate with a degree in English and Japanese Literature. Peirce then enrolled at Columbia University, to pursue an MFA in film. Career While at Columbia, Peirce completed The Last Good Breath, an experimental short film about two star-crossed lovers caught amidst a world war in which one lover always lives and the other always dies. The short screened as part of the Leopards of Tomorrow program at the Locarno International Film Festival. Boys Don't Cry While at Columbia working on an idea for her thesis film about a female soldier in drag during the American Civil War, Peirce read a Village Voice article about the life and death of Brandon Teena, a transgender man from Nebraska who was brutally raped and murdered when his gender history was discovered. Switching from her original thesis project, Peirce traveled to Falls City, Nebraska, where she conducted research, interviewed a number of people from the town including Lana Tisdale (Brandon's girlfriend) and Lana's mother, and attended the murder trial of the two homicide suspects. The subsequent film short she made for her thesis in 1995 was nominated by Columbia faculty for a Princess Grace Award, and received an Astrea Production Grant. After film producer Christine Vachon saw a version of the short, Vachon and Peirce began working on a feature