Leslye Headland was brought up in a strict religious home and grew up watching the Marx Brothers and MGM musicals. Headland notes that Alfred Hitchcock's film Rear Window was the first time she saw the camera as a tool and realized what a director did. Later in life as she was completing her BFA at New York University, Headland notes the difficulty and dark time faced due to the 9/11 attack and names David Fincher's Fight Club as the reason she has a lifelong artistic need to make a joke about what is truly painful.
