Leigh Anne Janiak (born February 1, 1980) is an American filmmaker. She is best known for directing the horror films Honeymoon (2014) and the Fear Street trilogy (2021).
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Early life and education
Janiak was born and raised in Ohio, U.S. She graduated from Mentor High School in Mentor, Ohio, where she was heavily involved in theater.
She completed an undergraduate course in comparative religion at New York University, before studying at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and then at a graduate school at the University of Chicago, where she was studying for a PhD in Modern Jewish literature. Janiak left before completing her doctorate.
Career
Janiak moved to Los Angeles in 2005, where she worked for two production companies. Her first industry job was at Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way, as a producer's assistant. Prior to directing Honeymoon, Janiak turned down an opportunity to direct a network television show, as one of the conditions of the directing job required her to shadow a veteran director. Janiak was afraid that shadowing a veteran director would affect her career as a female filmmaker as she did not want to be stigmatized. Janiak made her directorial debut with the horror film Honeymoon, starring Rose Leslie and Harry Treadaway, debuting the film at the South by Southwest Festival in 2014. The film's development started in 2010, and Janiak began writing the script together with Phil Graziadei in 2012. The film was shot in 2013 in North Carolina on a limited budget. It received positive reviews from critics, with review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes' critics' consensus stating that it "packs more slow-building horror than many bigger-budget productions."
