Victoria "Vicky" Jenson is a film director best known for co-directing the first Shrek alongside Andrew Adamson.
Before Shrek[]
Before working on Shrek, she was a storyboard artist/background artist for several animated and live-action productions including Hanna-Barbera's Rock Odyssey and John Hughes' She's Having a Baby. She also took on the role of art director for the animated cult classic, FernGully: The Last Rainforest, and was the production designer for the straight-to-video horror film, Playroom. Eventually she joined DreamWorks animation where she multi-tasked several positions for The Road to El Dorado and Chicken Run.
Shrek[]
Vicky Jenson was hired to co-direct Shrek as a replacement for Kelly Asbury, whom had left production to work on another DreamWorks film, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. Jefferey Katzenberg personally promoted her due to Jenson's hard work as a story artist trying to piece the film together to the best of her abilities. Her and Andrew Adamson worked in halves when working on the film, separately answering questions animators and other crew members had when working on certain sequences. Shrek would be released on May 18, 2001 and become a smash success, ranking in $484.4 million at the box office.
Beyond Shrek[]
After the film's success, she would receive the first annual Kiera Chaplin Limelight award given at the Women's Image Network Awards. The film also helped make her one of the most inspiring Hollywood female directors, given how she started one of the most successful film franchises of all time. Vicky Jenson later directed another animated film at DreamWorks, which was the infamous Shark Tale (originally titled, Shark Slayer). While a box office success, the reaction from both critics and audiences were mixed to negative, with the film being highly regarded as the worst piece of DreamWorks media. Around this time, she also made a live-action short film titled The Family Tree, which won numerous independent film awards. In 2009, she made her live-action feature film debut with the independent romantic comedy Post Grad starring Alexis Bledel, which met with mostly horrendous reviews. Vicky Jenson would then take a brief hiatus from filmmaking and settled with directing a stage production of the play Time Still Stands, which received highly positive reviews from theater critics. Since 2017, she worked with Skydance Animation directing the animated film, Spellbound. It was released on November 22, 2024 to mixed reviews. It also reunited Jenson with John Lithgow, whom she worked with on the first Shrek film.
Trivia[]
- She is the only core member of the original crew to not be involved with future installments.
- She is the only female director to take the helm of a Shrek film to date.