The filmmaker got a late start on her career but won acclaim for a freewheeling style that made room for contributions from actors like Marc Maron, who survives her.
Lynn Shelton, the acclaimed director of “Humpday,” “Sword of Trust” and numerous other films, died Friday at Keck Medical Center in Los Angeles. She was 54.
She suffered from a previously unidentified blood disorder, said a spokesman, Adam Kersh.
Shelton was best known for her work as a writer and director of independent films, intimate serio-comic dramas focused on relationships and family, often with complicated women at their centers. She worked in a shaggy, freewheeling style, encouraging actors to improvise and contribute, drawing freely from their own experiences to craft their characters and tell her stories.
Lynn Shelton was born on Aug.27,1965, in Oberlin, Ohio, and grew up in Seattle, the daughter of Wendy Roedell, a developmental psychologist specializing in early childhood education, and David “Mac” Shelton, a trial lawyer and mediator-arbitrator. They divorced in 1974. Like her parents, Shelton attended Oberlin College before returning to the Pacific Northwest to attend the University of Washington School of Drama. She then moved to New York, studying photography and related media at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.
She was already interested in filmmaking, she told The Times in 2009, but “I just did not have the confidence to do it.” In 2003, she attended a Q&A with the French filmmaker Claire Denis, and found herself inspired not only by Denis’s talent, but also by her tenacity.
