credits Sausage Party (filming) Producer (2015) Fox Catcher (completed) Producer (2014) American Hustle Producer (2013) Her Producer (2013) The Grandmaster Executive Producer (2013) Zero Dark Thirty Producer (2012) Spring Breakers Excutive Producer (2012) The Master Producer (2012) Killing Them Softly Producer (2012) Lawless Producer (2012) Catch .44 Producer (2011) Waking Madison Producer (2010) True Grit Executive Producer (2010) Passion Play Executive Producer (2010)

Chris de Costa was by no means the fashion design powerhouse he is today when he decided to have a child. Still working out of tiny design warehouses in the Meatpacking District, Chris became enraptured with the idea of having a child to dote on and dress. When his best friend, a struggling model named Maya Aguero, agreed that she would love her own child to style and dress, they came up with the perfect plan. de Costa, who was unflappingly homosexual and considered the idea of touching a vagina tantamount to death, agreed to donate his sperm to Aguero. After a grueling year of fertility discussions and treatments, the pair were left thinking, "do I really want a child?" but it was too late. Mara Hemera de Costa was born, and she was gorgeous. Their earlier issues quickly evaporated.
Mara was three years old when Chris de Costa legally changed his (and her) last name to Novio and began his personal brand. From there, things really took off, and while the idea of keeping his three year old Mara around as a fashion accessory akin to a dog you dress in sweaters still lingered somewhere on the surface, Chris was so busy putting everything into his business that in those days, he struggled to recall that he had agreed, and given large sums of money, to be a parent. Maya Aguero, who soon became Maya Bancroft, wasn't much better. Being known as the woman who mothered Chris Novio's child blasted her career from the Earth to outer space, and the two were so busy working through their passions that often, Mara fell to the wayside.
Not that Mara ever really seemed to mind. This independence she was given from an early age often fostered in positive ways in her later years-- she never felt like she needed any sort of supervision, she never felt the need to apologize for things she had done, and she did not grow up with the stigma of a little girl who needed to do this and that to make others happy. Instead, her whole life was based around making herself happy, always. To say that "spoiled" was an option was unnecessary.
Because of her diverse ethnicity and the constant travel of her childhood, Mara learned fluent Spanish and a good deal of French in her younger years. She was passed from boarding school to boarding school, occasionally coming home to watch her Dad's new line walk the runway at NYFW or to visit her half-brother, Thomas Aguero, who her mother had birthed with her new boyfriend, who would later become her husband. Deceptively complicated, Mara's childhood remained rather stagnant and simple for most of her life. While the public eye kept a close watch on her-- they awaited patiently her first arrest, drug binge, or horrible forray into acting-- Mara spent her time learning what she really wanted to do with her life. At the end of her boarding school career, she applied to Tisch School of the Arts in Film and Television, and was accepted on early admission.
Finally, Mara had made it obvious to the rest of the world what she intended to do with the rest of her life, and the negativity seeped out of all corners. "She doesn't have any talent," some particularly scatching critics would explain. "She just got the spot because of her father's clout. She's wasting a great spot for other students who didn't have her connections, and that is completely unfair to those of us who don't have a-list Fashion Designer fathers."
As it turns out, Mara didn't give one fuck about any of the thoughts that people felt the need to voice. Mara had spent her whole life directing herself, in a sense, the way she felt she needed to go. The idea that Mara didn't deserve her position was not so much laughable as it was, in her mind, nonexistant. She had never worried about what other people thought, and she certainly did not begin when she started, and inevitably graduated, Tisch.
It was about five more years of self-study and effort before Mara began to receive recognition for her work. Over the years she had developed connections, contacted screenwriters and directors, and made herself a comfortable position in the Hollywood spiderweb. In 2010, her first backed project, Waking Madison hit theatres, and while it went straight to DVD, she found herself more excited than she had been in a long time.
When she picked up the Coen Brother's True Grit, the name "Mara Novio" started to becmoe more than a silly little girl who was using her daddy's money to provide financial backing for films that would otherwise never see the light of day. She started up her own production company named Persephone and, as the years tumbled forward, received more nominations for an Academy Award in the same year than anyone had, ever. Ever ever.
Knowing all this of her history, it is easy to guess that Mara is a powerhouse, but there's nothing quite like meeting her to back up this assumption. She has no need to apologize for things she's done, does not shrink under the glare of criticisms, has never felt the need to prove herself, feeling that she's done that a million times over. She finds the idea of quiet women with their heads down extremely tiresome.
Not only that, but Mara is extremely pretentious about all forms of art media, including music, film, television, body art, and photography. She will not hold back if she thinks you're bad or that you need serious improvement. She has two reasons for this: one, that she doesn't really give a shit about holding back her opinions, the other that she assumes no one will get better if they're always padded with positive remarks.
Mara generally prefers to use persephone production company to give backing to auteurs who otherwise might get the recognition they deserve. She knows she has the money and connections to make big things happen, and would prefer to make sure they happen with people who otherwise might be overlooked despite their talents
Mara is a massive feminist and is well aware of the huge discrepancy in the treatment of women vs men in Hollywood, but does not harp on it. Instead, she chooses to constantly prove that she is the best in her field not despite her gender but partly because of it, and takes the time to advise other women on how to make it in a massively tricky market.
Rumors continue to follow Mara Novio everywhere she goes. The girl is part evil genius, part enigma, part big drunk. No matter what people think or say, however, Mara is quickly taking over the producing world, scrawling her pretty handwriting all over city landscapes.