Life and Career
She attended Ward Melville High School. Her father is well-known solid state physicist Philip B. Allen, who was awarded Germany's Humbolt Award and a Guggenheim fellowship for his work exploring electron-phonon effects in nanosystems.
She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell University.
Allen attended graduate school at the University of Southern California where she was awarded the Jack Nicholson Directing Scholarship as the most promising director of her class, and short-listed for an International Clio Award for a spec Coca Cola commercial. She directed her 25-minute thesis film Eyeball Eddie, an edgy dark comedy depicting a stormy relationship between a prosthetic glass eye and the insecure boy stuck behind it, which won at film festivals world wide and caught the eye of studios, leading to her feature directorial debut, Aquamarine. The film, which starred Emma Roberts and Sara Paxton, was nominated for two Teen Choice Awards for "Choice Breakout (Female)" and "Choice Chick Flick" and two nominations and one win for the Young Artist Awards.
Elizabeth Allen's next feature film Ramona and Beezus, is an adaptation of her favorite childhood book series by Newbery Award winning author, Beverly Cleary. The film stars Selena Gomez, Ginnifer Goodwin, John Corbett, Josh Duhamel, Sandra Oh, and 9-year old newcomer Joey King as the imaginative Ramona Quimby. Ramona and Beezus was awarded a “Certified Fresh” from Rotten Tomatoes and Nominated for a Teen Choice Award for Selena Gomez and Won the Young Artist Award for Joey King. Allen was the recipient of Women's Image Network (WIN) Award for Best Female Director of the year.
Allen is currently attached to Is He the One at Fox 2000, a story of a woman on her wedding day, which flashes back to the heroine's three greatest loves before we learn who's waiting for her at the altar. She is also attached to adapt and direct Elinor Lipman's novel The Pursuit of Alice Thrift as well as the independent film, My Mother’s Boyfriend, produced by the Chris and Paul Weitz's company, Depth of Field. She has written numerous screenplays, including an adaptation of Jerry Spinelli’s children’s book, Stargirl for Paramount Studios, original musical Promdress for Disney Features, and Driving While Infatuated for Fox Searchlight. Allen has since directed television episodes of "Gossip Girl", "90210", "Life Unexpected", "Vampire Diaries", and "Franklin & Bash".
Allen is a member of the Directors Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America and the Motion Picture Editor’s Guild. Additionally, she teaches directing in the graduate film school program at USC. She is a recipient of the Women's Image Network (WIN) Award, awarded for excellence in promoting gender equality in media.
Allen currently resides in Los Angeles.
Twitter handle: @thisislizallen
Read more about this topic: Elizabeth Allen (director)
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