Seimetz was born in Florida and mainly grew up in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area. She has Ukrainian ancestry, and also spent part of her childhood in Ukraine.[5] She briefly attended film school at Florida State University before moving to Los Angeles. There, she worked as a nanny, a waitress, and a seamstress while learning filmmaking.[6]
Seimetz's performance in A Horrible Way to Die won her the Best Actress award at Fantastic Fest. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to good reviews.[8] She appeared in The Off Hours. About her, the Los Angeles Times wrote: "Every year, the Sundance Film Festival has a semi-official 'it girl' who encapsulates the festival's cocktail of discovery and buzz. But what about someone who embodies the independent film world's sense of community and the pitch-in spirit of collaboration, something like a most valuable player? That prize might well go to Amy Seimetz."[9]
The Hollywood Reporter singled Seimetz out as one of the breakouts of Sundance that year: "As a late-night truck-stop waitress and orphaned lost soul, Seimetz invests Off Hours' dead-end world of tiny tragedies with a hidden, hard-won strength."[10] She appeared in Revenge for Jolly!. In 2012, she made her feature directorial debut with the Florida-based thriller Sun Don't Shine, which she also wrote, produced, and co-edited.[11] The film premiered at South By Southwest to rave reviews.[12]Indiewire wrote: "Her terrific directorial debut was a brilliant noir exercise with less mumbling than raw brawls. She pinned me to my Alamo Drafthouse seat and the film kept me there for the next 82 minutes."[13]
Seimetz is the star of Upstream Color and Pit Stop, both of which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. In February, she was added as a series regular to AMC's series The Killing. In season 3, she plays Danette Leeds, a "hard-living, financially strapped single mother whose 14-year-old daughter goes missing".[14]
In June 2014, Starz announced that they had ordered a 13-episode anthology series of the film The Girlfriend Experience, co-written, co-directed, and executive produced by Seimetz and Lodge Kerrigan.[3] This came after the film's creator Steven Soderbergh stated: "I think if I were going to run a studio I'd just be gathering the best filmmakers I could find and sort of let them do their thing within certain economic parameters. So I would call Shane Carruth, or Barry Jenkins or Amy Seimetz and I'd bring them in and go, OK, what do you want to do?"[15] The series was later renewed for a second season, and Seimetz continued to produce, write, and direct episodes.[16]
In 2021, Seimetz was announced as the director and an executive producer of The Idol; however, by April 2022 she had left the project amid its creative overhaul, with roughly 80% of the series already filmed. Her material was not used in the final project.[28][29]
Personal life
In 2016, Seimetz was engaged to filmmaker Shane Carruth,[30] though they had separated by 2019.[31] She later obtained a temporary restraining order against him, alleging years of emotional, mental, and physical abuse, which Carruth denies.[32] In 2020, Seimetz was granted a restraining order against Carruth that expired in August 2025.[32]
^I Shared with Claire Sloma, Marlon Morton, Amanda Bauer, Brett Jacobsen, Nikita Ramsey, and Jade Ramsey ^II Shared with Brady Corbet, and David Oyelowo.
↑ Nguyen, Hanh (March 23, 2018). "'Atlanta' Director Amy Seimetz on Creating Those 'Get Out' Vibes in the Creepy Episode 'Helen'". IndieWire. Archived from the original on July 6, 2024. "I also grew up in Ukraine and had gone to Ukrainian festivals and doing a lot of polka and stuff," Seimetz said. "So I kind of pulled on that, this hodgepodge of Eastern European sort of strangeness," she continued. "Then I imagined this experience of maybe entering my family's very Ukrainian, polka dancing parties."
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