Alice Wu is a Chinese American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 film director

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 and screenwriter

Screenwriter

Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

.

Personal life

Alice Wu was born on April 21, 1970 and raised in San Jose, California

San Jose, California

San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...

, then moved to Los Altos, California

Los Altos, California

Los Altos is a city at the southern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The city is in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population was 28,976 according to the 2010 census....

 where she graduated from Los Altos High School

Los Altos High School (Los Altos, California)

Los Altos High School, established in 1954, is a public school located in the affluent Silicon Valley suburb of Los Altos, California. It has generally demonstrated a high level of academic achievement...

 at the age of 16. In 1990, she received her B.S.

Bachelor of Science

A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...

 in Computer Science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

 from Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

. Two years later, she completed her Master's degree

Master's degree

A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...

 in Computer Science at Stanford. Before becoming a filmmaker, Wu worked as a software engineer

Software engineering

Software Engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering to software...

 for Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 in Seattle. She then left the corporate world to pursue a filmmaking career full time.

Career

Wu pursued a career in computer science, but began writing a novel while working at Microsoft. Deciding the story would work better as a film, she signed up for a screenwriting class, in which she penned the feature script Saving Face. Encouraged by her screenwriting teacher, she left Microsoft in the late 1990s to try to turn the script into a film, giving herself a five-year window. Production had begun when she reached the fifth year.

Alice Wu's most noted work is the 2005 Saving Face. It was inspired by her own experiences coming out as a lesbian in the Chinese American

Chinese American

Chinese Americans represent Americans of Chinese descent. Chinese Americans constitute one group of overseas Chinese and also a subgroup of East Asian Americans, which is further a subgroup of Asian Americans...

 community. She worked a film based on Rachel DeWoskin

Rachel DeWoskin

Rachel DeWoskin is an American screen actress and author.DeWoskin was raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, where she attended the alternative Community High School. The daughter of a Sinology professor at the University of Michigan, she majored in English and studied Chinese at Columbia University...

's memoir Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China. However, the movie never made it past pre-production and the project is now canceled. In 2001, the script for Saving Face won the CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment

Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment

The Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment is a Los Angeles-based non-profit organization, founded in 1991, to promote Asian Pacific Americans in the media arts and entertainment. It is the longest-running, largest, and most influential meeting place for APAs in the entertainment industry...

) screenwriting award.

External links

• Interview with Saving Face's Alice Wu and Joan Chen, at AfterEllen.com