Ava DuVernay recently talked about her decision to not get married or have kids in a Thursday interview with InStyle magazine.
The ‘Selma’ director says that by not starting a family, she was able to focus more on her career.
DuVernay, who formerly worked as a publicist, began prioritizing her now awarding winning filmmaking career in her 30s. She has been able to focus on the passion she has for her career.
“There’s that line people say, ‘No new friends.’ But there can be,” the filmmaker said. “I can’t mature in my work if I don’t open my life a bit more. I didn’t have kids by choice, and I’m not married by choice. I was able to embrace my career later in life, in my 30s. So I’m going to do what feels good to me, and I’m going to have fun.”
Speaking about her life in the context of the pandemic and the last couple of years, Ava DuVernay added:
“I feel like I’ve made it through something. We are still in the pandemic, and it’s a tough time. I’m clear about the things that are important to me now and prioritizing things. I’m someone who was a real workaholic and I always resented being called a workaholic because that makes it sound like an addiction of some kind. My work is my heartbeat, and I enjoy doing it, so I always resented it being called something negative.”
“When you put a sense of labor on top of something you really love, you need to be able to divide the love of it and the labor of it,” she explained.
“I was able to focus so that I’m doing less of what I don’t like and more of what I do like. That’s a fortunate and privileged position, but I’m in it. I’m treating myself better, from a health perspective.”
She added: “I always resented being called a workaholic because that makes it sound like an addiction of some kind,” the “Queen Sugar” creator explained. “My work is my heartbeat, and I enjoy doing it, so I always resented it being called something negative.”
Ava DuVernay is an American filmmaker. She won the directing award in the U.S. dramatic competition at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival for her second feature film Middle of Nowhere, becoming the first black woman to win the award.
Ava DuVernay, in full Ava Marie DuVernay, (born August 24, 1972, Long Beach, California, U.S.), American director, producer, and writer whose best-known works explore the African American experience.
Ava DuVernay was a publicist before directing. Journalism became less of a focus for her and she moved into PR, working as a junior publicist for 20th Century Fox, Savoy Pictures and a few other firms for 12 years. In an August 2019 interview with Variety, DuVernay credited her father with starting her own PR agency.
Over the years, she developed a voice and vision that flowered into reality as she made more films and documentaries and television that effortlessly combined art and activism across forms. This is how Ava DuVernay shaped the world we live in today.