Rachel Talalay

Talalay was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her father Paul Talalay was a pharmacologist, born in Berlin to a Russian Jewish family, and her mother Pamela is an English biochemist. She has two sisters and a brother.[2] She was raised mostly in Baltimore, Maryland, with two years of her childhood in Britain.[1] Talalay attended Yale, where she majored in mathematics, graduating in 1980.[3][4] She also ran the Yale Film Society.[3]

Talalay has worked in a number of different capacities in filmmaking before making her directorial debut with the film Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991).[5] Talalay also worked on the first four A Nightmare on Elm Street films.[3] Her work with the earlier Nightmare films utilized her computer skills and finding ways to create better special effects while still keeping costs low.[3] When she directed Freddy's Dead, she was given internal memos telling her not to be "too girly" or "too sensitive."[6]

Talalay also directed Tank Girl in 1995, and was looking into re-optioning the rights to make a new film in 2008.[7] As a film producer, Talalay worked with director John Waters on the films Hairspray (1988) and Cry-Baby (1990). She was also a production assistant on Waters' 1981 film Polyester.[8]

Talalay states that ever since Doctor Who was revived in 2005, she wanted to work on the show.[9] Talalay directed all three of Peter Capaldi's series finales: series 8's "Dark Water" and "Death in Heaven",[10] series 9's "Heaven Sent" and "Hell Bent"—the former considered by many to be one of the best episodes in the show's 57-year history[11]— and series 10's "World Enough and Time" and "The Doctor Falls",[12] as well as the Doctor Who 2017 Christmas special, "Twice Upon a Time".[13] In 2019, she directed a film adaption of Joe Ballarini's A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting for Netflix.[14]

Talalay met British film producer Rupert Harvey while working on Android in 1982. They began a relationship soon after, and were married in 1990, with John Waters officiating the wedding.[4][15]

• Rachel Talalay at IMDb