Catherine Hardwicke: The Cool Big Sister

"She made me have eight haircuts before we even started filming," reports Shiloh ruefully. "He had this sort of long style that just sort of hung over one side of his face," retorts Hardwicke.

"We needed to see both of his eyes."

It was Hardwicke who made Pattinson pluck back his eyebrows for Twilight, and tried to put Emile Hirsch on a fitness regime for Lords Of Dogtown, which he eventually circumvented by drawing abs on his stomach

with mascara. Actors speak affectionately of Hardwicke as if she was their cool big sister. "Catherine is crazy," Seyfried tells me. "She never drinks coffee, she never eats sugar. She's naturally energetic and she makes other people excited too."

 

Energy levels were at a premium on Red Riding Hood, which was shot in 45 days in Vancouver, for £30m. To bring the film in on budget, Hardwicke admits, "I had to be laser precise." Which begs the question - why did she have to scrabble for cash?

A respected production designer who made the transition to the director's chair in 2003 with Thirteen, she might have expected to have been inundated with a mailbox full of scripts and bigger budget project offers after the mega-success of Twilight. But this didn't happen.

Contrary to internet rumours, she was certainly offered the second Twilight film New Moon, with an increased salary. The sticking point was that she would have to prepare and shoot the film faster than she liked, so the reins passed on to Christopher Weitz, who met the studio deadline with a broader, soapier flick. "No regrets," she says. "I liked the first book best anyway."

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