Tributes to ‘brilliant’ cinematographer Halyna Hutchins after she was shot by Alec Baldwin on film set
The grieving husband of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins revealed that Alec Baldwin had been in touch and was ‘very supportive’.
Film industry insiders said Mrs Hutchins was an ‘incredible artist’ with a huge career ahead of her.
She was named one of American Cinematographer magazine’s rising stars in 2019 and was married to Matthew, a lawyer, with whom she had a young son Andros, believed to be eight-years-old.
They lived in Venice Beach, California, and she referred to Andros affectionately online as her ‘little man’.
Film industry insiders said Mrs Hutchins was an ‘incredible artist’ with a huge career ahead of her
Mrs Hutchins’s most recent post on Instagram, from Tuesday, showed her riding horses on set in New Mexico, two days before the tragedy.
She was born in Ukraine in 1979 and grew up an ‘army brat’ on a Soviet military base in the Arctic Circle where she was ‘surrounded by reindeer and nuclear submarines’, according to her website.
The desolate environment gave her a taste for filming and she would go on to document her love of extreme sports including parachuting and cave exploration.
Mrs Hutchins graduated from Kiev University with a degree in international journalism before going on to work as an investigative reporter on British documentary productions in Europe. She said: ‘I was fascinated with storytelling based on real characters.’
Mrs Hutchins graduated from Kiev University with a degree in international journalism before going on to work as an investigative reporter on British documentary productions in Europe
She later moved to the US and in 2015 graduated from the American Film Institute. It was here that she was mentored by Stephen Lighthill, a cinematographer who worked on Top Gun.
She went on to shoot last year’s independent superhero film Archenemy alongside director Adam Egypt Mortimer. Speaking to Good Morning Britain, he said: ‘I don’t know how her son is going to grow up knowing that his mother died being accidentally shot on a film set.’
Mr Mortimer added: ‘I’m so sad about losing Halyna and so infuriated that this could happen on a set. She was a brilliant talent who was absolutely committed to art and to film.’
Ukrainian friend Andriy Semenyuk described her death as a ‘stupid, shocking loss’.
Richard Denton, producer behind Shakespeare Uncovered, said: ‘Halyna was the most wonderful, vital, lively and positive person to work with. She was completely unpretentious and incredibly professional.’