Jeff Woolnough

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Jeff Woolnough
Role:	Director
BSG Universe:	Re-imagined Series
Date of Birth:
Date of Death:	Missing required parameter 1=month! ,
Nationality:	CAN
Official Site
IMDb profile

Jeff Woolnough (also credited as Jeffrey W. Woolnough) is a Canadian film and television director who directed three episodes of the Re-imagined Series. A member of the Directors Guild of Canada, he began directing scripted television in 1988 and has accumulated credits across approximately 150 hours of television movies, limited series, and hour-long episodic drama.

Career

Early work

Before working in broadcast journalism and documentary filmmaking, Woolnough played guitar in a touring rock band during his college years and took his first production job in craft services. He credits apprenticing under Norman Jewison on the Academy Award-winning film Moonstruck (MGM, 1987) with redirecting him from non-fiction into dramatic directing. His first scripted directing credit was the Lifetime telefilm Betrayal of Silence (1988), filed under the credit "Jeffrey Woolnough."

Through the 1990s, Woolnough directed episodes of several syndicated and cable genre series, including Silk Stalkings, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, Stargate SG-1, Earth: Final Conflict, and multiple installments of The Outer Limits, as well as the NBC miniseries Sleepwalkers (1997). He also directed the two Universal Soldier direct-to-video sequels produced for Showtime: Universal Soldier II: Brothers in Arms (1998) and Universal Soldier III: Unfinished Business (1999).

In the early 2000s, Woolnough directed episodes of Dark Angel, Taken (Sci-Fi Channel, 2002), Dead Like Me, and Smallville, among others.

Battlestar Galactica

When Breck Eisner departed the Battlestar Galactica miniseries prior to production, Woolnough was among the directors considered to replace him before Michael Rymer was selected. He subsequently joined the Re-imagined Series as a recurring director, working on both the first and second seasons. At the time of his engagement, his credits on Smallville, Stargate SG-1, and Dead Like Me were cited in the series' official companion volume.

Woolnough directed the Season 1 episode "The Hand of God" (written by Bradley Thompson and David Weddle), the season's visual-effects-intensive set piece built around the fleet's strike on a Cylon tylium refinery. For Season 2, he returned to direct "Home, Part II" (written by David Eick). In the audio commentary for that episode, Eick noted that because Woolnough had previously helmed "The Hand of God," he was a director already "intimate with the characters and the style" of the series — a factor Eick called important given that the scripts for the arc were being substantially rewritten during production. Eick singled out Woolnough's direction of Kara "Starbuck" Thrace's prayer scene after her return to Galactica following the recovery of the Arrow of Apollo as a particularly effective moment within what he described as one of the most logistically demanding episodes of the run.

His third episode, "Downloaded" (Season 2, Episode 18; written by Thompson and Weddle), presented the Cylon perspective of resurrection and was subsequently nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) at the 65th World Science Fiction Convention (Nippon 2007, Yokohama) in 2007, and was also nominated at the 5th Annual Visual Effects Society Awards for Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Broadcast Program.

Director credits for Battlestar Galactica

• Season 1:
  • The Hand of God
• Season 2:
  • Home, Part II
  • Downloaded

Later television work

In 2008, Woolnough directed the CBC biographical television film Céline, an unauthorized account of Céline Dion's early life. The production received nominations at the 24th Gemini Awards (2009) for Best TV Movie and Best Writing.

He directed the 2010 CBC sports biography Keep Your Head Up, Kid: The Don Cherry Story (written by Tim Cherry) and its 2012 sequel Wrath of Grapes: The Don Cherry Story II. Keep Your Head Up, Kid earned him a nomination at the 25th Gemini Awards for Best Direction in a Dramatic Program or Miniseries. At the Directors Guild of Canada Awards held on 25 September 2010 at the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, Woolnough shared Outstanding Team Achievement wins in two categories: Best Television Series – Drama (for the Being Erica episode "Everything She Wants") and Best Television Movie/Mini-Series (for Keep Your Head Up, Kid).

Woolnough served as pilot director on the BBC America period drama Copper (2012) and on the CBC/CW legal drama Burden of Truth (2018), for which the CBC Media Centre press release described him as "veteran director Jeff Woolnough (The Expanse, Vikings, Saving Hope, Bones)".

Woolnough directed ten episodes of Vikings (History/MGM, 2013–2020) across multiple seasons, the fourth-highest individual total among the series' directors per IMDb's full credits listing. His Viking episode credits include "Answers in Blood" (2.05), "Unforgiven" (2.06), "Warrior's Fate" (3.04), "Scarred" (3.05), and "Revenge" (4.18). He received Canadian Screen Award nominations for Best Direction in a Drama Series for his Vikings work at the 5th (2017), 6th (2018), and 7th (2019) Canadian Screen Awards ceremonies.

Woolnough also directed twelve episodes of the science fiction series The Expanse (Syfy/Amazon, 2015–2022), joining in its first season (2015) before Breck Eisner — the director originally considered for the BSG miniseries — came aboard in 2017. His other episodic credits include CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, NCIS, Bones, Supernatural, The Vampire Diaries, Eureka, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and Riverdale.

Woolnough's official website states he has accumulated twelve award nominations and three outstanding achievement awards across his career.

Personal life

Claudette Roche with her husband, Jeff Woolnough, at the 2018 Vero Beach Wine & Film Festival.

Woolnough is married to actress and dialect coach . The couple met in Toronto during the Toronto International Film Festival and relocated to Los Angeles in 1990 after both obtained U.S. green cards. In 2015 they moved to Vero Beach, Florida. Woolnough and Roche served as co-chairs of the Vero Beach Wine & Film Festival. In 2018 they registered JWCR LLC, a Florida limited liability company based in Vero Beach.

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