Introduction
Sian Heder (born23 June 1977) is an American screenwriter, director, and producer best known for her 2006 short film Mother and 2016 feature film Tallulah. She has also worked on many episodes of the acclaimed television series Orange Is the New Black.
Early life
Sian Heder was born on June 23, 1977, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to artists Mags Harries and Lajos Héder. Both of her parents are immigrants; mother from Wales and father from Hungary. They founded Harries/Héder Collaborative in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1990 and have worked together on several major public art commissions since its formation.
Sian has a sister, author/artist Thyra Heder.
Sian graduated from the Carnegie Mellon University School Of Drama in 1999. At the CMU she was trained by actress Ingrid Sonnichsen. Actor/producer Zachary Quinto was one of her classmates.
Career
After graduation, in the early 2000s, Heder moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. In the early days of her acting career, she supported herself by working for a nanny agency that provided babysitters to guests of prominent Hollywood hotels. One day, she was tasked to care for a toddler at the penthouse of the Four Seasons Hotel. She quickly noticed that the toddler's mother had come to the hotel to have an affair and didn't know how to change her child's diaper. Heder alerted the concierge who refused to intervene because the child wasn't being physically abused. The traumatic experience inspired her to produce her first short film, Mother.
She initially performed the scene at Naked Angels, a theater company in New York. The positive feedback she received gave her the confidence to make it a larger project. In early 2005, the script for Mother was 1 of 8 chosen to be awarded a fellowship for the prestigious American Film Institute's DWW (Directing Workshop for Women) program. She wrote and directed the 17-min film and released in January 2006, starring Angela Featherstone and Ashleigh Sumner. The film won Heder three awards: "Best Narrative Short" award at the 2006 Florida Film Festival; "Best Narrative Short" award at the 2006 Seattle International Film Festival; and the "Best Short" award at the 2007 Oxford Film Festival, Mississippi. The film was also nominated for Cinefondation Award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Since then the film was further selected to appear in competition at Palm Springs International Festival of Shorts and the British Film Institute's London Film Festival.
Heder later explained her experience in a 2016 interview:
When I first moved out to LA I was an actor and supporting myself by working as a nanny for all the fancy hotels and I had a lot of weird, twisted experiences I could write 10 movies about, but I had a particular encounter with one mother I thought was so outrageous...She was a horror show, really, but it was simultaneously the most tragic thing I’d ever been a part of and the most hilarious. Like, when I told the story, it was so funny to people, but I left there crying.
In 2010, Heder wrote the screenplay for two episodes of Ray Romano's hit TV series Men of a Certain Age— "The Bad Guy" (2010) and "Can't Let That Slide" (2011). For her writing, she won a Peabody Award shared with her fellow writers. The following year, she wrote, directed, and produced a crowdfunded short film titled Dog Eat Dog, starring her CMU friend Zachary Quinto and Philip Baker Hall. The film, intending to raise awareness for pet adoption, was crowdfunded on Kickstarter with the goal of $7,500; it ended up collecting $30,204.
In 2012, Heder wrote the screenplay for 20 episodes for seasons 1-3 of the Netflix original series Orange Is the New Black. During the first season of the series, she came across the role of a prison guard named "Pornstache," for which she cast Pablo Schreiber, also a Carnegie Mellon alum (2000). She also got to produce 13 episodes (2 of which she wrote) of the third season of the series. Later, in 2018, she directed the eighth episode of the sixth season, Gordons.
Heder's next major work as a writer and director was her first feature film Tallulah, starring Ellen Page(Juno and Inception fame), Allison Janney (The West Wing and Mom fame), and Tammy Blanchard (The Invitation fame) (2016). The film was an extension of her debut short film Mother and backed by Route One Entertainment, Maiden Voyages Pictures, and Ocean Blue Entertainment. Tallulah follows the story of a young rootless woman "Tallulah" (played by Page) who kidnaps a baby from a neglectful mother "Carolyn" (played by Blanchard). "Margo" (played by Janney) mistakenly believes she's the child's grandmother. Though the subject matter seems dark, Heder said it's a dramatic comedy — though she wasn't aware of its comedic overtones when she started writing it in 2005. The film had its world premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2016, and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the festival. A week before its premiere, Netflix acquired worldwide rights to stream the film online.
After Tallulah, Heder directed an episode of The Path, two episodes of GLOW, and en episode of Orange Is the New Black.
Most recently, in 2020, she wrote and directed "The Silence" episode of the TV series Little America. She has also finished filming for Coda, starring Marlee Matlin, Amy Forsyth, and Emilia Jones. The film currently is in the post-production phase with the release date yet to be announced. Heder is also in process of directing Call Jane, which will star Susan Sarandon.
As a producer, her most recent work was on the eight episodes of Little America, starring Conphidance, Jearnest Corchado, and Kemiyondo Coutinho.
Personal life
Heder is married to actor and producer David Newsom. The couple has two children and the family lives in Los Angeles, California.