Ida Lupino

Ida Lupino was an English actress and singer who became a pioneering director and producerthe only woman working within the 1950s Hollywood studio system to do so. With her independent production company, she cowrote and coproduced several of her own socialmessage films and was the first woman to direct a film noir, The HitchHiker in 1953. In her 48year career, she appeared in 59 films and directed eight others, mostly in the United States, where she became a citizen in 1948. The majority of her later career as an actress, writer and director, was in television, where she directed more than one hundred episodes of productions ranging from westerns, supernatural tales, situation comedies, murder mysteries and gangster stories. She was the only woman to direct episodes of the original The Twilight Zone series and the only director to have starred in the series as well.

Lupino was born in Herne Hill, London, to actress Connie OShea and music hall entertainer Stanley Lupino, a member of the theatrical Lupino family, which included her uncle, Lupino Lane, a popular songanddance man. Her father, a top name in musical comedy in the UK and a member of a centuriesold theatrical dynasty dating back to Renaissance Italy, encouraged her to perform at an early age. He built a backyard theater for Lupino and her sister Rita , who would also become an actress and dancer. Lupino wrote her first play at age seven and toured with a traveling theater company as a child.

Source: Wikipedia