Rachel Talalay
Talalay in 2016
Born	(1958-07-16) July 16, 1958 (age 65) Chicago, Illinois, United States
Alma mater	Yale University
Occupations	Filmmaker producer professor
Years active	1981–present
Spouse	Rupert Harvey ​ (m. 1990)​
Children	2
Parent	Paul Talalay (father)

Rachel Talalay (born July 16, 1958) is an American filmmaker and producer best known for directing films such as Ghost in the Machine (1993) and Tank Girl (1995). She is also a professor at the University of British Columbia.^[1]

Early life and education

Talalay was born in Chicago. 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, with two years of her childhood in Britain.^[1] Talalay attended Yale University, where she majored in mathematics, graduating in 1980.^[3][4] She also ran the Yale Film Society.^[3]

Career

Talalay 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] Despite her familiarity with the Freddy movies, 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 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] She returns to Doctor Who in 2023 for a special with David Tennant & Catherine Tate returning as the Fourteenth Doctor and Donna Noble as part of the show's 60th anniversary. In 2019, she directed a film adaption of Joe Ballarini's A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting for Netflix.^[14]

Personal life

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] Talalay and Harvey have a daughter named Lucy. ^[16]

Filmography

Films

Television

TV movies

• A Tale of Two Wives (2003)
• The Wind in the Willows (2006)
• Hannah's Law (2012)
• The Dorm (2014)
• Unclaimed (2016)

TV series