Joan Tewkesbury

Joan Tewkesbury (born April 8, 1936) is an American film and television director, screenwriter, playwright, author, producer, choreographer and actress. She had a long association with the celebrated director Robert Altman, writing the screenplays for "Thieves Like Us" (1974), and "Nashville" (1975), widely regarded as "Altman's masterpiece", and which earned her a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay. She has directed numerous hours of episodic television, including for Disney, HBO, CBS, TNT, and NBC.
Life and career.
Tewkesbury was born in Redlands, California, the daughter of Frances M. (née Stevenson), a registered nurse, and Walter S. Tewkesbury, an office machine repairman. She began her career at age ten as a dancer in "The Unfinished Dance" with Margaret O'Brien and Cyd Charisse. One of her early television acting roles was in a guest appearance on the short-lived NBC drama "It's a Man's World". She has directed off-Broadway, co-choreographed and directed for the Oregon Ballet Theatre and performed, written and directed for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Her play, "The Retrospective", was presented at the Manhattan Theatre Source. In 2011, Tewkesbury published her first novel, "Ebba and the Green Dresses of Olivia Gomez in a Time of Conflict and War". She has presented a class which she created, “Designed Obstacles, Spontaneous Response”, throughout the United States, Israel, and Japan. Since 2003, Tewkesbury has lived in Tesuque, New Mexico.