--- name: "Marielle Heller" canonical: "https://film.one/person/marielle-heller" fi1m_id: "marielle-heller" imdb_id: "nm1716636" tmdb_id: 177532 wikidata_id: "Q21032133" roles: ["Director"] born: "1 October 1979" reviewed_on_fi1m: 4 average_fi1m_score: 75 average_as: "director" average_over: 4 updated: "2026-09-24T19:30:19.504669+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Marielle Heller ## Identity Marielle Heller - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/marielle-heller - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** marielle-heller - **IMDb ID:** nm1716636 - **TMDB ID:** 177532 - **Wikidata ID:** Q21032133 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marielle_Heller, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21032133, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1716636/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/177532 Director. Born 1 October 1979 in Marin County, California, USA. ## Details - **Work:** Director - **Born:** 1 October 1979, Marin County, California, USA - **Active:** 2014–present - **Frequently works with:** [Anne Carey](https://film.one/person/anne-carey.md), [Micah Fitzerman-Blue](https://film.one/person/micah-fitzerman-blue.md), [Noah Harpster](https://film.one/person/noah-harpster.md) - **Average Fi1m score:** 75, as director, over 4 titles - **Fi1m score by decade:** 2010s 81 (3), 2020s 56 (1) - **Fi1m against the critics:** 75 to 74 across 4 titles - **Score spread:** 2 at 80+, 1 at 60–79, 1 under 60 - **Genres:** Comedy 3, Drama 3, Crime 1, Family 1, History 1, Horror 1 - **Screen time:** 5 hours of reviewed films - **Box office:** $77m across 3 films with figures - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marielle_Heller, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21032133, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1716636/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/177532 ## Coming up - *The Comebacker* (2027-07-29), Director ## Streaming the US now - **Amazon Prime Video:** [*Transparent*](https://film.one/tv/transparent.md) (82) - **Netflix:** [*A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood*](https://film.one/film/a-beautiful-day-in-the-neighborhood.md) (77) - **Disney+:** [*Nightbitch*](https://film.one/film/nightbitch.md) (56) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Marielle Heller > Marielle Heller makes films about people who are not fine and are pretending to be, and she gets actors to show the difference without raising their voices. The trouble comes when a story asks her to go somewhere ugly; she tends to cut away. Early in *Nightbitch* (2024), Amy Adams runs into an old colleague in a supermarket and is asked how she is finding motherhood. She says "I love it", brightly. Then Heller shows us the moment again, and this time Adams talks for two minutes about what the last two years have done to her, and then we get the bright "I love it" once more. That is the Heller method in one scene: the person in front of us is not fine, everyone in the room is pretending otherwise, and the camera stays on her face until we know the difference. She was an actor before she was a director, and it shows. Her debut, *The Diary of a Teenage Girl* (2015), which she also wrote, was adapted from a graphic novel. She followed it with two films built around real people, *Can You Ever Forgive Me?* (2018) and *A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood* (2019), and in between directed episodes of *Transparent* and *Casual*, television that, in *Transparent*'s case, treated each episode as a short film sharing a family. *Nightbitch* is her first script since her debut and the most personal thing she has made, drawn from her own years as a mother. What she is good at is leaving a silence alone. Actors in her films are allowed to be unlikeable without the film disowning them, and they are given time. Her brother Nate Heller writes her scores, light and quiet and mostly out of the way, which suits a director who has said she likes films where the explosions happen inside someone's heart and mind instead of outside. In the first half hour of *Nightbitch* we laughed a great deal, at the eggs and the playground and the same bath every night, cut short and tight by Anne McCabe so the routine wears a groove; by the fourth bath we had stopped laughing, and we think Heller meant us to. What she is less good at is following a story somewhere ugly. *Nightbitch* is about a woman turning into a dog, and each time the body starts to change Heller cuts away, so the fur and the tail never once frighten. Adams then reads us paragraphs of voiceover explaining what the scene has already shown. There is a softness in her endings, too, a wish for everybody to come round, that has been noticed in her work before and which *Nightbitch* does not shake off; the mothers from the library group go from mocked to embraced in a change of heart the film wants more than it earns. She is a director actors should want and a writer who does not yet trust the audience to sit in the dark. If she can find a story that will not let her look away, she has everything else she needs. ## Biography Marielle Heller is an American director, screenwriter and actress. She was born on 1 October 1979 in Marin County, California. She studied theatre at UCLA and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Heller made her feature directorial debut with *The Diary of a Teenage Girl* (2015), which she also wrote. She subsequently directed *Can You Ever Forgive Me?* (2018) and *A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood* (2019). In 2024 she wrote, directed and produced *Nightbitch*. She has also directed episodes of the series *Transparent* (2014) and *Casual* (2015), and appeared as an actress in *The Queen's Gambit* (2020). Her husband is comedian Jorma Taccone; her brother Nate Heller has composed the music for several of her films. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (4) - *Nightbitch* (2024), Fi1m 56, as Mom at Grocery Store (uncredited) — [page](https://film.one/film/nightbitch.md) - *A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood* (2019), Fi1m 77, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/a-beautiful-day-in-the-neighborhood.md) - *Can You Ever Forgive Me?* (2018), Fi1m 84, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/can-you-ever-forgive-me.md) - *Transparent* (2014), Fi1m 82, Director — [page](https://film.one/tv/transparent.md) ## Complete filmography (22) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *The Comebacker* (2027), Director, Producer, Screenplay - *The President's Cake* (2026), Executive Producer - *Nightbitch* (2024), as Mom at Grocery Store (uncredited) · Director, Producer, Writer — Fi1m 56, [page](https://film.one/film/nightbitch.md) - *MacGruber* (2021), series, as Mac's Mom - *The Queen's Gambit* (2020), series, as Alma Wheatley — Fi1m 74, [page](https://film.one/tv/the-queens-gambit.md) - *What the Constitution Means to Me* (2020), Director, Executive Producer - *A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood* (2019), Director — Fi1m 77, [page](https://film.one/film/a-beautiful-day-in-the-neighborhood.md) - *Can You Ever Forgive Me?* (2018), Director — Fi1m 84, [page](https://film.one/film/can-you-ever-forgive-me.md) - *Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping* (2016), as Documentary Crew Member - *Casual* (2015), series, Director - *The Diary of a Teenage Girl* (2015), Director, Screenplay - *Transparent* (2014), series, Director — Fi1m 82, [page](https://film.one/tv/transparent.md) - *A Walk Among the Tombstones* (2014), as Marie Gotteskind - *Paper Anchor* (2013), as Caroline - *MacGruber* (2010), as Clocky - *Awesometown* (2006), as Waitress - *Football Town* (2005), as Ouma Rice - *White Power* (2001), as Party People - *Spin City* (1996), series, as Carrie - *The Glitch*, Producer - *Kolma*, Writer - *FernGully*, Director, Screenplay, Producer ## Gallery - ![Marielle Heller at the premiere of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, 2019 Toronto Film Festival](https://film.one/media/person/10345/gallery-818a6377ae2a.jpg) Marielle Heller at the premiere of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, 2019 Toronto Film Festival — GabboT, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/A_Beautiful_Day_in_the_Neighborhood_02_%2848735008732%29.jpg/1280px-A_Beautiful_Day_in_the_Neighborhood_02_%2848735008732%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Marielle Heller](https://film.one/media/person/10345/gallery-ff4cdf8f8930.jpg) Marielle Heller — Image via TMDB - ![Marielle Heller](https://film.one/media/person/10345/gallery-d9798c93c933.jpg) Marielle Heller — Image via TMDB - ![Marielle Heller](https://film.one/media/person/10345/gallery-a7eb85fab464.jpg) Marielle Heller — Image via TMDB --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/marielle-heller