Anne V. Coates

Anne Voase Coates (12 December 1925 – 8 May 2018) was an English film editor whose career lasted over six decades. She is most widely known for editing David Lean’s epic *Lawrence of Arabia* (1962), which earned her the Academy Award for Best Film Editing. She received additional Oscar nominations for *Becket* (1964), *The Elephant Man* (1980), *In the Line of Fire* (1993), and *Out of Sight* (1998). In 2007, she was made a BAFTA Fellow.

Coates was born in Reigate, Surrey, to Kathleen Voase (née Rank) and Major Laurence Calvert Coates. Her early passion was horses, and as a girl she imagined becoming a racehorse trainer. She attended Micklefield School in Reigate, then High Trees School in Horley, and finally Bartrum Gables in Broadstairs, Kent. Before entering film, she worked as a nurse at Sir Archibald McIndoe’s pioneering plastic surgery hospital in East Grinstead.

Her interest in cinema began after seeing William Wyler’s *Wuthering Heights* (1939). She aimed to become a director and took a job as an assistant at a production company that made religious films, where she also handled projection and sound recording. She repaired film prints of religious shorts before they were sent on tour to British churches. That splicing work led to a rare position as an assistant film editor at Pinewood Studios, where she first assisted editor Reggie Mills. She later worked with David Lean on *Lawrence of Arabia*. Her long career included editing films for Steven Soderbergh, such as *Out of Sight* and *Erin Brockovich*. She was a member of both the Guild of British Film and Television Editors and American Cinema Editors. Variety’s Eileen Kowalski noted that many of the great editors have been women, including Coates.

In an industry where women made up only 16 percent of editors on the top 250 films of 2004, and 80 percent of those films had no women on their editing teams, Coates succeeded as a top editor. She received a BAFTA Fellowship in February 2007 and an Academy Honorary Award (a lifetime achievement Oscar) in November 2016. She described her approach: “In a way, I’ve never looked at myself as a woman in the business. I’ve just looked at myself as an editor.” She added that she tried to work with directors whose work she liked, and that she cut for performances rather than action, focusing on what she saw in the actors’ eyes.