Kathleen Kennedy (producer)
Kathleen Kennedy (born June 5, 1953) is an American film producer and president of Lucasfilm. In 1981, she co-founded the production company Amblin Entertainment with Steven Spielberg and her eventual husband Frank Marshall.
Kathleen Kennedy CBE | |
|---|---|
Kathleen Kennedy at the 2015 San Diego Comic Con International in July 2015. | |
| Born | June 5, 1953 Berkeley, California, U.S. |
| Alma mater | San Diego State University |
| Occupation | film producer |
| Years active | 1979–present |
| Employer | Lucasfilm (2012–present) |
| Title | President, Lucasfilm Ltd. |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
Her first film as a producer was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). A decade later, again with Spielberg, she produced the Jurassic Park franchise, the first two of which became two of the top ten highest-grossing films of the 1990s. In 1992, she co-founded The Kennedy/Marshall Company with her husband, Frank Marshall. On October 30, 2012, she became the president of Lucasfilm after The Walt Disney Company acquired the company for $4.2 billion. She received the Irving G. Thalberg Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2018.
As the president of Lucasfilm she oversaw the development, production, and release of projects such as the Star Wars sequel trilogy including, The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019), as well as the Star Wars standalone films Rogue One (2016), and Solo (2018), and the fifth installment of the Indiana Jones series, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023). She has also produced various Star Wars series for Disney+ including The Mandalorian (2019–present), The Book of Boba Fett (2021), Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022), and Andor (2022–present).
Kennedy earned great success as a producer of numerous films directed by Steven Spielberg which have earned over $11 billion worldwide, including five of the fifty highest-grossing movies in film history. As a producer she has received eight Best Picture Academy Award nominations.