Jennifer Michelle Lee (born Jennifer Michelle Rebecchi; October 22, 1971) is an American filmmaker and playwright. She served as the chief creative officer (CCO) of Walt Disney Animation Studios from 2018 to 2024, before stepping down to return to full-time filmmaking. She is best known as the writer and one of the directors of Frozen (2013) and its sequel Frozen 2 (2019), the former of which earned her an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Besides being the first female CCO of Walt Disney Animation Studios, Lee was the first female director of a Walt Disney Animation Studios feature film and the first female director of two feature films that each earned more than $1 billion in gross box office revenue.
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Early life
Jennifer Michelle Rebecchi was born on October 22, 1971 to Linda Lee and Saverio Rebecchi, who were living in Barrington, Rhode Island at the time. After their divorce, Lee and her older sister Amy, who later became an English teacher, lived with their mother in East Providence, Rhode Island. Both Lee and her older sister graduated from East Providence High School and the University of New Hampshire. Lee earned a bachelor's degree in English in 1992 and relocated to New York City, where she worked as a graphic artist in publishing; she designed audiobooks for Random House. As an adult, she began using her mother's maiden name, Lee, in a professional capacity and in January 1995, legally changed her last name from Rebecchi to Lee.
Career
Lee graduated from Columbia University School of the Arts' Film Program with an MFA in film in 2005. While at Columbia, she won several awards for excellence in screenwriting and gave birth to her daughter.
Her script for The Round Up was a quarter-finalist in the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition in 2009 and was subsequently optioned by Appian Way Productions.
In March 2011, Phil Johnston, a former classmate at Columbia, called Lee to ask her to join him at Disney Animation in Burbank to help him write Wreck-It Ralph. What was supposed to be a temporary eight-week writing gig eventually turned into a much longer commitment. First, she was asked to stay on until Ralph was finished. She then became involved with Frozen, initially as screenwriter and later as director alongside Chris Buck. When Lee was brought on board, she helped transition the film from an action-adventure to "more musical, with more comedy." She worked closely with the songwriters (Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez) in the writing of the script. Frozen gave her the opportunity to celebrate "wild and wonderful" girls like her childhood self, and her daughter, Agatha. Lee drew inspiration from her life to create one of the biggest animated films ever. Lee inspired Frozen from her relationship with her sister, Amy. Connecting script to real life, Lee referred to herself as the wild, little daydreaming mess, a Tasmanian devil, and [Amy] was always the responsible one, a straight-A student," says Ms. Lee, who identifies with Kristen Bell's clear-as-a-bell Anna, not Idina Menzel's Elsa. Audiences worldwide resonated with the story of two sisters, as Frozen was also the highest-earning film with a female director in terms of domestic earnings, until surpassed by Warner Bros.' Wonder Woman.
On May 17, 2014, Lee delivered the commencement address to the class of 2014 at her alma mater, the University of New Hampshire. She revealed that she had struggled with self-doubt while growing up, and then in April of her junior year of college, her boyfriend was killed in a boating accident, after which she felt "no doubt, only grief ... and for a brief moment ... [knew] better than to waste a second doubting." Years later, that memory would help her overcome her initial doubt over whether she was good enough to apply to Columbia. At Columbia, Johnston recognized she was talented but insecure, and one day asked her to "promise ... that you'll leave it out of your work, just know that you're good enough and move on." She concluded: "If I learned one thing it is that self-doubt is one of the most destructive forces. It makes you defensive instead of open, reactive instead of active. Self-doubt is consuming and cruel and my hope today is that we can all collectively agree to ban it ... Please know, from here on out, you are enough and dare I say, more than enough." UNH then awarded her the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.
Personal life
Lee married Robert Joseph Monn on May 30, 1999, at the Rhode Island Country Club. They have a daughter, Agatha Lee Monn (b. 2003), who voices pre-teen Anna for the middle verse of "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" in Frozen. They later divorced.
In November 2019, Lee confirmed that she was in a relationship with Frozen 2 actor Alfred Molina. They were married in August 2021 by actor and mutual friend Jonathan Groff who had introduced them, and live in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, California with Lee's daughter.