Fish Tank

Andrea Arnold OBE is a filmmaker and former actress from England, who made her feature film directorial debut in 2006 with Red Road. Arnold was born on April 5, 1961 in Dartford, Kent, where she was the eldest of four children. She was born when her mother was only 16 years old and her father was... 17, and they separated when she was very young. Her mother had to raise all four children alone, which is reminiscent of Arnold's own directorial debuted short, Wasp. When people are asked if the story is in any way biographical, Arnold replies “I grew up in a working-class family, so I guess you could say I write from what I know.” Even as a young girl, she was writing dark stories about human experience. In an interview, Arnold speaks about how when she was a mere 10 years old, she wrote her first play that expressed her "horror" of the slave trade, and a few years later while studying for a dance CSE, she made a performace piece; “I took quotes from The Diary of Anne Frank and read them aloud as I moved around the room. All the other kids would just bung on some pop music and dance. I remember the examiners sitting there looking at me, perplexed.
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