Mary Lambert Bio
Mary Josephine Lambert (born October 13, 1951) is an American director whose work spans music videos, feature films and television. She is best known for shaping the visual identities of pop icons in the 1980s and for directing high-profile horror features in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Early Life and Background
Mary Josephine Lambert was born in Helena, Arkansas, the daughter of Martha Kelly and Jordan Bennett Lambert III, a rice and cotton farmer. She grew up in a family connected to Arkansas public life; her younger sister is former U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln. Lambert later studied visual art and design, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she developed skills that would inform her later work in moving-image storytelling.
Lambert’s early exposure to imagery and design at the Rhode Island School of Design shaped her aesthetic approach to filmmaking and music video direction. Her education emphasized composition, art history and visual experimentation, which translated into distinctive, stylized videos and films. Those formative influences helped her move from still and commercial imagery to directing narrative and performance-based work for musicians and film makers.
Path to Director
Lambert began her professional career directing music videos and visual projects for recording artists, building a reputation for inventive, high-concept visuals. In the 1980s she collaborated with a range of performers from pop to rock, developing a body of work that showcased narrative imagery, theatrical staging and symbolic motifs. Her early success in music videos created openings into television and feature filmmaking.
Her music-video work led to opportunities on larger productions, including a brief attachment to Under the Cherry Moon, for which she was initially signed to direct before stepping back into a creative consultant role early in that production. That experience and her growing network in the entertainment industry set the stage for her first feature, the experimental Siesta, released in 1987.
Mary Lambert Career
Early Career (1980s)
Lambert’s early career in the 1980s centered on music-video direction for high-profile artists and the translation of music visuals into commercial and cinematic language. She directed several videos for Madonna, including Borderline, Like a Virgin, Material Girl and La Isla Bonita, which helped define Madonna’s early public image and garnered significant attention on MTV. Her work during this period combined narrative sequences, stylized sets and strong visual motifs that emphasized character and spectacle.
Alongside Madonna, Lambert directed videos for Janet Jackson such as Control and Nasty, and for artists including Eurythmics, Mick Jagger, The Go-Go’s, Sting and Debbie Harry. These collaborations established Lambert as a director capable of shifting between dramatic storytelling and performance-driven visuals. Her credits in this decade also include early award recognition through MTV Video Music Award nominations and other industry acknowledgments tied to the prominence of those videos on music television.
Breakthrough (1987–1989)
Lambert made her first feature film with Siesta in 1987, a stylized and controversial experimental work starring Ellen Barkin and Jodie Foster. Siesta received notice on the festival circuit and was nominated for the Independent Filmmaker Project Spirit Award for Best First Feature, signaling Lambert’s transition from short-form music videos to feature filmmaking. The film’s aesthetic ambition demonstrated her interest in psychological and visual intensity rather than mainstream commercial safety.
Her most widely seen breakthrough as a feature director came in 1989 with Pet Sematary, an adaptation of Stephen King’s 1983 novel. King personally selected Lambert for the project, and she worked closely with him during production to preserve the tone of the source material. Pet Sematary premiered in April 1989 and achieved significant box office success, grossing approximately $57.5 million worldwide against an estimated $11.5 million production budget, elevating Lambert’s profile in genre cinema and leading to the sequel Pet Sematary Two in 1992 with Lambert returning as director.
Notable Works and Milestones
Across film and video, signature works include the music videos Borderline, Like a Virgin, Material Girl and Like a Prayer for Madonna, the music videos Control and Nasty for Janet Jackson, the feature Siesta, and the horror films Pet Sematary and Pet Sematary Two. Lambert also directed the horror film Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005), the Syfy production Mega Python vs. Gatoroid (2011), and she directed the 1993 interactive film project Double Switch for Digital Pictures. Her career is notable for crossing disciplinary boundaries between music video aesthetics and mainstream genre filmmaking.
Mary Lambert Award Nominations
Lambert’s work has received multiple industry nominations, particularly for her music-video direction and her first feature. Siesta was nominated for the IFP Spirit Award for Best First Feature. Several of the music videos she directed or worked on earned MTV Video Music Award and other industry nominations in categories that included cinematography, choreography and experimental video, reflecting the visibility of her work on music television in the 1980s.
Mary Lambert Awards Won
Videos directed by Lambert achieved notable award recognition: Madonna’s Like a Prayer, directed by Lambert, won the MTV Video Music Award for Viewers Choice. Lambert-directed work on Sting’s video for We’ll Be Together received the MTV Video Music Award for Best Cinematography. Other projects associated with Lambert and her collaborators won awards or industry honors, underscoring the cultural impact of her visual contributions to popular music and film.
Mary Lambert Family
Mary Lambert is the daughter of Martha Kelly and Jordan Bennett Lambert III. She has a younger sister, Blanche Lincoln, who served as a United States Senator from Arkansas. The family background in Arkansas and connections to public life have been part of Lambert’s personal history and public profile.
Personal Life
Lambert has been married to Jerome Gary since 1991 and the couple have one son, Jordan. Public records and biographies note the marriage and the family but Lambert generally maintains a professional public profile focused on her work in film, television and music video direction rather than extensive personal publicity.