The book, Personal Velocity, marks Miller's debut as a fiction writer, but the film is not her debut as a director. Miller was a filmmaker first, an actor-turned-director with her 1990 short, Florence, followed by her first feature, the 1996 Angela, which also took awards at Sundance that year -- the Filmmaker's Trophy and Cinematography Award. Given Miller's background, it is not surprising that the film was actually in the can -- shot in upstate New York this past summer -- before the book hit the shelves in September 2001, published by Grove Press.

While the book gives seven portraits of women in various struggles for survival, the film delves into the lives of only three: Greta, a book editor on the rise, played by Parker Posey; Delia, a tough mother on the run from an abusive husband, played by Kyra Sedgwick; and Paula, a soon-to-be young mother who narrowly escapes death, played by Fairuza Balk.

Miller is the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller and photographer Inge Morath and is married to Daniel Day-Lewis, actor and son of writer Cecil Day-Lewis. Ellen Kuras serves as the award-winning cinematographer on both Personal Velocity and Miller's previous Angela.

Director: Rebecca Miller
Executive Producers: John Sloss, Jonathan Sehring, Caroline Kaplan
Producers: Gary Winick, Lemore Syvan, Alexis Alexanian
Director of Photography: Ellen Kuras
Editor: Sabine Hoffman
Principal Cast: Kyra Sedgwick, Parker Posey, Fairuza Balk, Ron Leibman

The Book

Grove Press, 2001,178 pages

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