Personal Velocity

Born two years after her father divorced Marilyn Monroe, the multi-talented Rebecca Miller is the only child of renowned playwright Arthur Miller and photographer Inge Morath. After an enviable childhood growing up in a family of artists, she studied painting at Yale before acting in theater productions on the East Coast. Following a small part in the NBC movie The Murder of Mary Phagan, she made her feature film debut with a sizable role in the West German film Georg Elser — Einer aus Deutschland. She started her filmmaking career in 1990, making the short film Florence and directing a production of her father’s play After the Fall for the New York stage. She continued acting throughout the early ‘90s, playing Harrison Ford’s mistress in Regarding Henry, Kevin Spacey’s wife in Consenting Adults, and Cliff Robertson’s daughter in Wind. She played a couple of other supporting film roles (including a portrayal of commercial artist Neysa McMein in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle) before making the full-fledged turn to writing and directing. Her debut feature Angela was a lyrical drama that won a Gotham Award and got her a Filmmaker’s Trophy at Sundance, but its originality proved to be unmarketable for distribution. The next year, she married actor Daniel Day-Lewis, whom she met during pre-production of Nicholas Hytner’s film adaptation of her father’s play The Crucible. She then had two children and published a collection of short stories called Personal Velocity on Grove Press. After being approached by the InDigEnt production company, she adapted her book for the screen by focusing on only three of the original stories. Shot in digital video on Sony cameras in the PAL format, Personal Velocity: Three Portraits won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and received a limited theatrical release. In 2004 she directed the coming-of-age drama The Ballad of Jack & Rose. —allmovie guide