“The emo­tion­al part over­whelmed me” – Cather­ine Hard­wicke on Thir­teen at 20

Most of us pur­pose­ful­ly ignore mem­o­ries of our angsty teenage years, but some episodes are hard­er to for­get than oth­ers. Released in 2003, Cather­ine Hardwicke’s Thir­teen man­aged to cap­ture the fiery chaos of young adult­hood with a raw inten­si­ty that, much like its trou­bled pro­tag­o­nist, demand­ed our attention.

At its core was a pow­er­ful per­for­mance from a 14-year-old Evan Rachel Wood, drama­tis­ing a sto­ry that was itself inspired by the tur­bu­lent real-life expe­ri­ences of Hardwicke’s co-writer and Wood’s co-star, Nik­ki Reed. While fic­tion­alised, the relata­bil­i­ty of Thirteen’s sto­ry struck a chord with audi­ences that was so strong, it con­tin­ues to res­onate 20 years later.

“I had the idea that this wouldn’t be shot like any high school movie; it would be shot like war pho­tog­ra­phy – like you were in the mid­dle of a bat­tle,” says Hard­wicke, remem­ber­ing how she cre­at­ed the fly-on-the-wall feel that gives Thirteen’s argu­ment scenes their painful­ly hon­est tex­ture. ​“If some­body runs out of the room, you might fol­low that per­son into the next room or a door might get slammed on you. I want­ed to shoot it like a play.”

Wood plays Tra­cy, a qui­et teen who lives with her just-about-hold­ing-it-togeth­er moth­er (Hol­ly Hunter) in a cramped house. Tired of try­ing to fit in at school, she befriends local cool kid Evie (Reed) and the pair hit it off – almost too well. Soon, Evie has moved into the fam­i­ly home and the once child-like Tra­cy has trans­formed into an emo­tion­al­ly unpre­dictable teenag­er, com­plete with a pierced tongue, creep­ing drug habit and zero time for poor old mum.

“Nik­ki and her moth­er were strug­gling,” says Hard­wicke, tak­ing us back to the real events that inspired Thir­teen. ​“They were hav­ing a dis­as­trous time. She had a dark cloud over her head and hat­ed her moth­er, broth­er and father but didn’t hate me because I wasn’t a blood rel­a­tive. I was try­ing to be help­ful, think­ing ​‘How can I help this kid who’s going through these dark times?’”

At the same time, Hard­wicke was work­ing as a Pro­duc­tion Design­er on films by Richard Lin­klater, Rachel Talalay and David O. Rus­sell, all while try­ing to make the leap into direct­ing her own fea­tures. After try­ing to help Reed with activ­i­ties out­side of the home, she quick­ly dis­cov­ered her pas­sion for act­ing and inad­ver­tent­ly stum­bled into her first film.

“We start­ed to write a com­e­dy but I told her it had to be ground­ed. I was also vol­un­teer­ing at a school and watch­ing how kids were inter­act­ing,” says Hard­wicke. ​“It was shock­ing and out­ra­geous the rude things guys would say to girls and the pres­sure they were put under to look good. My eyes were open to the world they were liv­ing in and what their par­ents were deal­ing with so I said to Nik­ki, ​‘we’ve got to just write about the real thing. For­get com­e­dy. Let’s write about what you’re real­ly going through.’”

The pair were so close to their sto­ry, it flew out of them in just six days. How­ev­er, get­ting the mon­ey to make it wasn’t such a speedy task. Hard­wicke had no star attached and with no pre­vi­ous film under her belt, stu­dios were right­ful­ly cau­tious. ​“They said ​‘Are you crazy? A 13-year-old girl’s the star, it’s going to be R‑rated… it’s so depen­dent on execution.’”

Thank­ful­ly, their script made it to Hol­ly Hunter, who helped secure fund­ing. ​“I grabbed my lit­tle video cam­era, the kind with a flip-out mon­i­tor, ran over to Nikki’s house and filmed Nik­ki and her mom,” says Hard­wicke, recall­ing the last-minute prep that ulti­mate­ly con­vinced Hunter to sign on. ​“I was scared. She was an Acad­e­my Award win­ner and I’ve nev­er direct­ed before – but I flipped out the lit­tle video cam­era win­dow and showed it to her and she said ​‘I thought it was raw and real. It just felt spe­cif­ic.’ I think as an actress, she loved that specificity.”

Once on set, the real chal­lenge began. Shot in a work­ing house, Wood, Reid and Hunter stayed there for a few nights to strength­en the authen­tic­i­ty of their bonds. Despite Wood’s teenage out­bursts feel­ing too intense to be faked, Hard­wicke insists they were all orches­trat­ed down to a tee and yet she was still under­pre­pared for what was in store.

“The emo­tion­al part over­whelmed me,” she admits. In fact, there was one scene in par­tic­u­lar that caught her off guard. Dur­ing the movie’s final moments, Tra­cy and her moth­er reach boil­ing point after a heat­ed argu­ment and fall to the floor, each emo­tion­al­ly wrecked. ​“I didn’t realise how heavy that would get,” she adds. ​“At the end of the scene, Evan yelled ​‘CUT!’ It felt like she was in pain so I put my arm around her and we went into a bed­room and laid down on the bed.”

Wor­ried she had pushed Wood too far, Hard­wicke began to con­sole her young star before unleash­ing a flood­gate of on-set emo­tion. ​“I told her we didn’t have to do take two but she said ​‘What are you talk­ing about? I’m fine. I didn’t yell cut, I yelled FUCK!’” Still, it was too late: ​“Nik­ki came in and said ​‘Why are you hug­ging Evan, it’s my life’ then Hol­ly came in and said ​‘Why are you hug­ging these two girls and not me?’ We were all in this room weep­ing. It was intense,” laughs Hard­wicke, ​“but you feel that on screen.”

Hard­er still was the film’s depic­tion of self-harm: ​“I can’t stand to watch that scene,” says Hard­wicke, cit­ing Wood’s ded­i­ca­tion to the role for help­ing it feel as impact­ful as it is. ​“She’d only been 14 for a few months but had an extra­or­di­nary com­mand of being able to be an incred­i­ble actress.”

By the time pro­duc­tion had wrapped, the tor­rent of emo­tion Hard­wicke had cre­at­ed became clear, which made edit­ing it tricky. ​“It was too painful,” she says. ​“I had to trim it down because you can’t be in that head­space for too long.” How­ev­er, upon release, Thirteen’s authen­tic­i­ty and uni­ver­sal sub­ject mat­ter helped make it an indie hit, earn­ing Hunter a Best Actress Oscar nom­i­na­tion in 2004.

In the years since, it’s been used as a learn­ing tool, from Oprah host­ing moth­er-and-daugh­ter ​‘cin­e­ma ther­a­py’ screen­ings to schools using it to teach boys about respect­ing women. ​“Audi­ences were able to talk about Tra­cy,” says Hard­wicke. ​“Your mom could say ​‘Do you think that’s good what Tra­cy did?’ instead of ​‘Do you think that’s good what you did?’”

It also touched many peo­ple in unex­pect­ed ways: ​“Mar­got Rob­bie told me that when she was grow­ing up in Aus­tralia, this was one of the movies she and her friends could relate to. Skrillex said he saw it mul­ti­ple times and that it was his sto­ry of try­ing to fit in. I heard Steven Spielberg’s whole fam­i­ly watched it spread out over their lit­tle home cin­e­ma and by the end, they were all on one chair next to each oth­er.” Hard­wicke was also sur­prised to learn it had found a new life on Tik­Tok: ​“Peo­ple post a clip and say ​‘I just had this fight with my mom last week.’”

This per­son­al after­life makes Hardwicke’s first movie an extra spe­cial expe­ri­ence: ​“I felt so pas­sion­ate. I was going to make this movie because I felt it need­ed to get out there,” she says. ​“Oth­er moth­ers and daugh­ters need­ed to see this – that they’re not alone.