Her father Zhao Yuji (赵玉吉; Zhào Yùjí) was an executive at Shougang Group, one of the country's largest state-owned steel companies.

[9] In an interview with Vogue, Zhao described herself as "a rebellious teen, lazy at school" who drew manga-influenced comics and wrote fan fiction.

[14][15][16] Bartending and working odd jobs after graduating helped her realize that she enjoyed meeting people and hearing about their lives and histories, giving her the push to attend film school.

[18] Chloé Zhao's first work is her 2009 short film The Atlas Mountains, the story about Helen Thomas who develops a brief yet passionate relationship with an immigrant worker who comes to fix her computer.

Shot on location at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the film depicts the relationship between a Lakota Sioux brother and his younger sister.

[27] In a Filmmaker article, Zhao stated that her rebellious years in her childhood is what pushed her to leave China and study abroad, helping her connect to the plot of the film which focuses on a character struggling in this environment.

[28] Half improvised, around 100 hours of footage was collected as Zhao worked with the real residents of the reservation to draw inspiration from their lives and personalities in order to help shape her story.

[34] In 2017, Zhao directed The Rider, a contemporary western drama, which follows a young cowboy's journey to self-discovery after a near-fatal accident ends his professional riding career.

[37] Her inspiration came from Brady Jandreau—a cowboy she had met and befriended on the reservation where she shot her first film—who suffered a severe head injury when thrown from his horse during a rodeo competition.

[38] According to an Indiewire article, this film discovers a new side of the Western theme, revolutionary because a Chinese immigrant changed the nation's "oldest genre.

[43] Peter Keough of The Boston Globe wrote: "[The film] achieves what cinema is capable of at its best: It reproduces a world with such acuteness, fidelity, and empathy that it transcends the mundane and touches on the universal.

[45] The adaptation from Jessica Bruder's Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century was shot over four months traveling the American West in an RV with many actual nomadic workers.

[46] Bruder's book revolved around characters that can be found in the film, such as Linda May, a 64-year-old living in her van and scrounging for jobs in order to buy land for a permanent home.

[48] The film tells the story of a widow who lost everything in The Great Recession and decides to travel in her van across the American Midwest, beginning a journey of self-discovery.

[49] They met a day before the 2018 Independent Spirit Awards, where McDormand was nominated for Best Actress and Zhao received a $50,000 grant for women directors.

The film has not received a theatrical release in China, with speculation that it was due to her past comments on the nation, and news of her Best Director win at the Academy Awards was also censored.

[55] The film follows the events of the 2019 Marvel movie Avengers: Endgame, featuring a new team of superheroes that must reunite in order to fight an ancient enemy of the human race, the Deviants.

The New Yorker stated that Zhao's style of directing dialogue scenes "reveals the absurdity of the script," saying "it might as well have been done via green screen, for the little tangibility and texture that it offers the characters and viewers alike.

"[59] The article also claimed that the film has reportedly been banned in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait due to the relationship between two male characters, Phastos and Ben.

[64] In April 2018, it was announced that Amazon Studios greenlit Zhao's untitled Bass Reeves biopic, a historical Western about the first black U.S. Deputy Marshal.

[65] In February 2021, Variety confirmed that Zhao is tackling the classic Universal monster Dracula as the writer, producer and director of a new take on the character in the vein of a futuristic sci-fi western.

[28] An example of her process can be found in Eternals when she saw the connection between actors Lauren Ridloff and Barry Keoghan who play Makkari and Druig in the film.