Born in London to film editor Anne V. Coates and film director Douglas Hickox.
Visited Los Angeles in 1986 and never went back. Her two brothers,
Anthony Hickox and 'James Hickox', are also film directors.
Originally intending to be a theatre director, she studied theatre at university and, after the family moved to California, worked at the Los Angeles Theatre Downtown. She took up her first job as apprentice editor because it paid much more than the "fifty dollars a week which didn't even cover my parking" she received at the LA Theatre.
