- Born
- Height5′ 10″ (1.78 m)
- Anna Wilding is a leading and award winning creator in feature film, television, music video and photography. Anna Wilding is cited in print media as "truly multi talented" and "iconic" for her work behind the lens and on screen and stage. Anna Wilding is an award-winning director, actress, writer, producer and still photographer. In addition Anna founded a known film company in London - Moving Horse Pictures, and runs Kalon Film Group LLC and Broader Horizon Entertainment LLC . Anna Wilding is a dual American citizen. Ms Wilding's work has contributed to over $1.5 billion in the global box office.
Ms Wilding is known in America and internationally . Anna works in both the studio and art house feature films, documentaries, television, streaming , cable business, music video's and tours solo art exhibits in galleries and Museums.Ms Wilding directed and/or co-produced major music videos for major rock stars and record labels. Anna is a leading movie industry consultant.
In 2015-2017, Ms Wilding pivoted and served as Chief White House Correspondent including on-air broadcaster and Presidential photographer. Anna took some of the most well known and acclaimed images of President Obama White House. Her photographic work appears in magazines, newspapers . Her acclaimed "Celebrate Hope-the Obama Collection" photography exhibit tours as a solo exhibit with multiple month long showings in major art galleries . Ms Wilding's photographic and fine art work tours worldwide from Rome to Hong Kong to Los Angeles and hangs in Collections worldwide.In 2021 Anna made the first ever authentic President Obama ,Mrs Michelle Obama, and President Biden NFT's. Many of Anna's images have gone viral.
"Anna's Obama Images make me think ... I call it 'Obama Classicism" after the great masters ... Raphael and Leonardo DaVinci."-said one Collector of Anna Wilding's work noted cinematography luminary Sherman Woody Owens A.S.C and former chair of USC Cinematography
Anna judged in the Australian Atom Film and TV Awards in 2013, 2014, 2017, and 2018 and served on the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) nominating committee 2021
Anna has often fought and negotiated for female equality and pay parity in Hollywood. On October 10, 2017, Anna broke her silence in mainstream media about her experiences with Harvey Weinstein where she had said "No" to his advances and the effect on that on her contracts as actor. Her interviews went viral. Ms Wilding was interviewed for an extensive exclusive 30 minute segment with Vinnie Politan on Court TV in 2020. Anna had been on the record in prior years speaking out and against the "casting couch".
Around 2006, Wilding it is well known that stood up and spoke out at a Directors Guild event in New York about the lack of female directors following yet again, another all male panel. In 2007, Wilding was also specifically and formally thanked for her important and powerful consultant producer work on all three "Lord of the Rings" films by producers and New Line studio executives Mark Ordesky and Bob Shaye.
Ms Wilding, as a film executive and in house producer and founder was nicknamed "Queen of the Independents" by industry insiders in the height of of independent art house motion pictures in the late1990's when Fox Searchlight, Paramount Screen Gems, Sony Picture Classics all started to some into existence to accommodate this new independent era of commercial filmmaking .
As an actress in 1993, she played the newsworthy "battered wife" (Gail) ever seen on prime time New Zealand television on the long running, award winning Shortland St. Clips of her work on the show were exhibited at that year's TV Awards; the show won for Best Drama TV Series. As an actress Anna was first discovered by Disney casting as a teenager in New Zealand . Anna cut her teeth in professional theater picking up awards for improvisational theater , performing at Second City as guest performer , as well performing in classics such as Midsummer's Night Dream off Broadway
Wilding directed and starred in the theatrically released and popular award winning and critically acclaimed hit feature documentary film (Warners/WEA) Buddha Wild Monk in a Hut. (as Narrator/Presenter and Director, Writer and Producer. Anna's additional responsibilities also included cinematography). The film qualified and was considered front-runner for the Oscars, is archived at Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences by official invitation, played out of competition at Sundance, and was nominated for and won an award in Best Feature Documentary USA by Kids First and the Coalition Of Quality Media -a collection of major US studios; the film played for over 60 days in cinemas. Other notable films directed by Wilding include "Pop Culture Punk Art", which was selected for Cannes SFC 2010, and "White Sands", and the feature documentary "Faultline" 2014, about the New Zealand earthquakes which screened and sold to institutions around the world. Ms Wilding later released it as a public service given the value of knowledge for active crisis zones.
From ages 10-15 she was a competitive tennis player. Headlines read at the time, "Wilding Keeps the Flag Flying." Wilding won her first tournament at the age of ten after hitting balls with a stick against a shed in a country paddock. Her family could not afford the trip to Florida to train with Bolitteri. She was first discovered as an actress by a New Zealand agent and then discovered by visiting Disney casting directors at the age of 16, who urged her to pursue an acting career internationally. Anna left for Australia and the USA in her teens to do that, working successfully on TV in comedy shows, feature film, and professional theater in New Zealand and Australia and then London and the USA. Professional theater shows included: Heloise and Abelard, Dazzle (at Auckland Town Hall), Midsummer's Night Dream (off-Broadway in New York), and When Harry Met Sally (Pasadena Arts Center, Los Angeles). Wilding has undertaken several guest star appearances including performing live at the televised Celebrity West Coast New York Tony Awards 2000 in the USA and stand up in 2019 .
Among other major music videos Wilding directed and/or co-produced for artists ranging from Rolling Stones to UB40, Stanley Jordan, and David Parker in the 1990's. In 2005, her long-form music video "Rebel In Me" (made for the International Songwriter of the Year 2004-World Music Awards-Moana and the Moa Hunters) was nominated for 2005 Los Angeles Femme Film Festival and played to rapturous applause in a packed house in downtown Los Angeles. Wilding's music videos have been seen on extensive play at MTV, VH1, etc.
Wilding won her first acting award as "Best Actress" at the International Theatre festival at the age of 19 for the comedy "The Patience of Silence", a play which she also wrote, directed and produced. Anna is known for her improvisational skills . She was professional Theatresports (improvisational comedy) player and won the "Audience Favorite Award".
Before traveling to USA, Wilding took up an acting scholarship she had won at the prestigious VCA in Melbourne, a winter program studying with a renowned New York method coach. Wilding was 1 of 25 actors, selected by American nationwide auditions to the former National Shakespeare Conservatory New York program (Yale) where she studied directly under one of Meryl Streep's tutors. This was a serendipitous turn as Wilding had often been compared to a young Streep in range. Wilding's audition was held at the old Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles (former home of the Oscar telecasts) as exciting moment, coming from NZ Anna hopes to never forget.
Wilding moved to Los Angeles by herself at the suggestion of casting directors. Wilding did not have a mentor in Hollywood, and worked three jobs in production and editing houses at one time, to support herself. Anna collaborated on major music videos and long form rock documentaries with major pop and rock icons and earned producer positions in key production houses leading to directing and producing major rock music videos for major artists.
Wilding, unwilling to deal with the "casting couch", still prevalent in those years, put her acting career on hold multiple times. She worked and enjoyed the challenge of the craft and business aspects of production. She continues to work in both freelance and executive ranks of the mainstream movie and film business.
Anna was soon an executive on several high profile independent film companies including Moving Horse Pictures out of London. Anna made an industry name in production and in-house producer and Exec positions in the mid-late 1990s in the mainstream commercial independent feature film scenes in LA and London. Anna Wilding had a hand in many significant and award winning films and projects.Industry insiders nicknamed her the "queen of the independents". As an executive of production companies in the 1990s, she was one of the first women in recent Hollywood history to fight for equal pay, and opportunity in Hollywood. It was rarely forthcoming and it is a fight that continues by women in Hollywood to this day.
Wilding founded the registered charity Wilding Foundation in New Zealand and it ran from 2009-2018. In February 2011, Wilding started an emergency relief fund-raising appeal for victims of the earthquake in her hometown of Christchurch. She returned to NZ to work on the ground voluntarily for the charity over a year.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous (updated by R.M. Sieger)
- SpouseJames E Sved(June 2014 - present) (1 child)
- Due to Wilding's generous and extensive consultancy and investigative work on Lord of the Rings, (prior to and then in tandem with the American Humane Association Film Unit) there are now both better general safety regulations and standards, and new animal welfare laws and rules governing the film industry in NZ.In 2007 was officially and publicly thanked, by the American producers of Lord of the Rings, for her humanitarian and consultant work on the trilogy.
- Combined with Rialto Cinemas to donate proceeds from sell out cinema showing of rough cut of Buddha Wild: Monk in a Hut to the tsunami relief appeal in 2005. Later on did an outdoor gala screening in Yosemite Pines Resort Bass Lake United States to benefit Amnesty. Film has gone onto being nominated for awards and festivals and was formally released in cinemas in 2007/2008 in USA and is being released on DVD nationwide in USA in 2010.
- Has background in music. Performed publicly and recorded with a couple of bands as a young teenager.
- First came to media attention at age 10 as tennis player.
- Her great uncle was tennis legend Captain Anthony Wilding who played his last match in America at Forest Hills before being killed in the war in 1915 at age 32. In that time, he also won bronze at the Olympics.
- Now I understand even more that there is nothing glamorous about war. Nothing heroic or romantic. All these young men dead, even without names. And this terrible cold. I wonder if it was as cold as this in 1915. - at Flanders 2005.
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