As your mother always told you, looks can be deceiving. Catherine Hardwicke is a pretty California blonde with a bubbly laugh -- and about the last person you'd expect to be the filmmaker behind a tough movie like Thirteen.

Thirteen, which opens here Friday and stars Holly Hunter and Rachel Evan Wood, concerns an adolescent's heartbreaking attempt to be part of the cool crowd at her school. The movie is all about sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll -- and body piercings -- and it's semi-autobiographical. And fully heavy hitting. Rachel Evan Wood plays the girl who goes from Barbie dolls to raves in a matter of weeks; the "bad influence" popular-girl role is taken by a screen newcomer named Nikki Reed. She's a terrific actor.

Nikki Reed, as it happens, co-wrote the script. Like, last year. When she was 13 years old.

As she explained during a visit through Toronto to promote Thirteen, Hardwicke has known Nikki Reed since Reed was a child of five. "I was like her surrogate mom. She's creative and fun and crazy -- but when she got to be 12, 13, I noticed this change in her. She was angry at her mother and at her father and at herself. She was obsessed with her looks, waking up at 4:30 every morning to do two hours of hair and makeup before going to grade seven!"

Hardwicke attempted to be a creative influence for the good, and thought she might get Nikki interested in writing. "She said she was more interested in acting, but I was afraid that would make her even more vain," says Hardwicke, laughing.

"But she loved it. We went to acting workshops. She had a natural talent." Nikki felt she could do more, and reminded Hardwicke that many actors also write their own material. Hardwicke agreed to go along with that idea, only because she thought writing workshops would get Nikki to read more. "I thought like, Jane Austen -- but it didn't work quite that way. We were going to do a cool teen comedy, but as you can see, that's not what happened. We started to realize that the real stuff she and her friends were going through was way more dramatic than anything we could think up." The duo wrote a first draft of their script in six days. "So then came the tears: Me -- crying in front of the producer." Thirteen was made in 24 days on a budget of almost nothing.

Hardwicke, who won the directing award at Sundance this year for Thirteen (her writing and directing debut) is an experienced production designer for film. She grew up in the little town of McAllen, Texas, right on the border of Mexico. "If you jumped off the balcony in my house," she jokes, "you'd land in the Rio Grande. It was a six-hour drive to the nearest museum. Not very cultural. Lots of drug culture and smuggling, though."

Educated as an architect, Hardwicke was busy designing and building things in Texas when she enrolled in graduate school at UCLA -- in film. When her colleagues discovered her background in architecture, they asked her to help design sets and so forth. "And I got projects in Toronto, Vancouver, Mexico and all over," she says, modestly glossing over the truth -- her production design credits include such films as Three Kings, Vanilla Sky, 2 Days In The Valley and Laurel Canyon.

"But I always wanted to make my own films, so I took acting classes and writing seminars and whatever else I could."

Hardwicke, who lives in Venice Beach, laughs when asked if her stock has risen with moviemakers since the immediate success of Thirteen. "A lot of people who barely notice you, who are higher up the food chain -- they are taking a bit of notice now," she concedes, laughing. "I'm no longer completely dismissed. A few weeks after Sundance, a few producers came up and said, 'We're really shocked your movie was so good, Catherine!' and I was like, 'Thaaanks.' At least now people will let me take that first meeting."


More Artists