Eunice Macaulay had a rather unusual career path for a filmmaker. After completing high school in England, she worked as a trainee analytical chemist at Pilkington Brothers and served as a radio mechanic with the Royal Navy during World War II. In 1946, she received a scholarship to Sydney University Teachers' College in Australia but had to return to England owing to family problems and got a job as a buyer in a glass company.

A Christmas card she created for her own amusement brought her to the attention of Gaumont British Animation, which hired her as a tracer in 1948. She soon became supervisor in charge of 30 inkers and painters, and stayed with Gaumont until 1951.

She spent the following year designing embroidery for J&P Coats and then got a job as an electrical design draftsman for a telephone company.

Macaulay moved to Scotland with her husband and two small children in 1953 and over the next seven years did a wide variety of creative work (television, visual aids, exhibition designs and models) on a freelance basis.

At the beginning of the 1960s, the Macaulays emigrated to the United States. While working with her filmmaker husband, she also freelanced there and in Canada, notably for the NFB and Hilary Harris Films, and made puppets for the pulp and paper pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal.

Macaulay returned to full-time work in 1969, joining Potterton Productions as co-ordinator of assistant animators, trace and paint supervisor, colour designer and checker. In 1973, she was hired by the National Film Board's English Animation Studio in a similar capacity.

In 1978, she and John Weldon co-directed Special Delivery, a hilarious send-up that won numerous awards, including the 1979 Oscar for best animated short.

In 1983, as producer, she initiated Just for Kids, a series of film adaptations of children's stories by Canadian writers, collaborating as producer and writer notably on Blackberry Subway Jam, Lucretia, Summer Legend, and The Long Enchantment.

Her collaborative credits also include that of writer on Ishu Patel's film Paradise/Paradis, nominated for an Oscar in 1985, and as writer/producer of Robert Doucet's film Dreams of a Land (1987), a look at Canada through the eyes of Samuel de Champlain. The last two films she worked on were George and Rosemary (1987) and The Wanderer/L'Étranger (1988).

Macaulay retired from the NFB in 1990.

You can find more details on the films directed by Eunice Macaulay in the Film Collection.