We already told you this was an awesome age and now one of Hollywood’s brightest stars just co-signed.
To refresh, if you’re new here — the age of 32, for many of us, has been an awakening. Careers are finally starting to flourish and businesses are booming credit to all the clarity that seemed to hit us all at once.
Such is the case with Ava DuVernay.
For the last few years, the director and producer has served audiences with dynamic projects such as “Selma,” a film centered around Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement; “The 13th,” a chilling documentary about the crippling impact of mass incarceration; and more recently, Disney’s “A Wrinkle in Time,” for which she was given a $100 million budget. That’s just on the film front — her show “Queen Sugar” has been gripping audiences since its debut on the OWN network in 2016.
Also from 32 Letter:
Shuwanza Goff Is House Dems’ First Black Woman Floor Director
The best part of all this #BlackGirlMagic-ness is that DuVernay didn’t discover her destiny until she was 32, providing us with all the goals.
She came into her own after a brief stint in journalism and a pretty stable career as a publicist.
“When people tell [my story], it’s about race and gender, ‘Black woman director,’ but my story’s also really about age because I didn’t pick up a camera until I was 32,” she explained to Refinery 29.
She wasn’t deterred by the fact that most of her peers had attended film school while she lacked formal training.
“For me to pick up a camera as a Black woman who did not go to film school — this is a testament to whatever path you’re on right now is not necessarily the path you have to stay on,” DuVernay told R29.
“If you’re on a path that’s not the one that you want to be on, you can also pivot, and you can also move, and age doesn’t make a difference, race, gender. It’s about putting one step in front of another, about forward movement to where you wanna be.”
Her pivot paid off. “A Wrinkle in Time” just blew the lid off the box office, and she made history becoming one of two black directors (the other is Ryan Coogler) to share the #1 and #2 spot at the box office with $100 million films.
Stay in touch! Subscribe to our newsletter or like us on Facebook.
Thanks for sharing this article. I’ve been contemplating on whether it’s too late to have a career shift but this really motivated me to not doubt how I feel and to take the leap.