If you meet Margaret Cardillo at a café, she’ll be personable and talkative. She will go in for a hug; saying she prefers it to handshakes. In between ordering an acai bowl and finding a place to sit, she will list some of the reasons she thinks Coconut Grove is the best neighborhood in Miami. The 44-year-old author, filmmaker, and University of Miami professor was recently awarded $50,000 to put toward her feature-length documentary about local television’s Jane Chastain, who was the first female sportscaster in the United States at Miami’s WTVJ.
Prior to receiving the grant, Cardillo had a remarkable journey toward the career she has today. Cardillo said she has wanted to be a writer since she was in middle school, even submitting her short stories to The New Yorker as an adolescent living in Naples, Florida.
The summer before her senior year of high school, her family sent her to a Harvard Summer School program where she took a Creative Writing class. In addition to reading and writing short stories, she specifically remembers being exposed to the works of Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike.
“I really did not want to go and of course it changed my life,” said Cardillo. “This was when I got serious about it as a life plan.”
Cardillo went on to get a bachelor’s degree from Boston College in English and Italian. After she graduated, she was having a hard time getting hired as a writer, so she became an associate editor at Hyperion Books in New York City, working in their children’s books department, which she describes as “the next best thing because it was just such a great education in what writing is all about.”
It was during this time that Cardillo came up with the idea of writing a different kind of biography: a gorgeously illustrated book that was almost like a gift; not something a child would have to check out of a library to do a book report on. The focus would be humanitarian and actress Audrey Hepburn.
She proceeded to create the book a couple years later when she took a creative writing fellowship at UM. In addition to writing, she did extensive research on the icon which included reading several biographies other authors had written about Hepburn.
Cardillo’s first children’s book, Just Being Audrey was published in 2011 and has gained the admiration of many, such as Marilyn Etzbach and her daughter, Cecile. Marilyn Etzbach used to be the manager of an Anthropologie store at Merrick Park. She shared that the book would fly off the shelves and the store employees also enjoyed reading it. This led to Marilyn Etzbach asking Cardillo to do a book signing.
“She came in with a newborn,” said Marilyn Etzbach. “She was so interested in exposing her amazing book and broadening that connection that she came in at a time when a lot of people keep to themselves and stay close to family.”
Cecile Etzbach (now 14 years old) shares the same birthday as Audrey Hepburn and has always been a fan of Just Being Audrey. “I like the way Miss Margaret presents her characters in a very related way,” she said. “She makes it easy to understand their personality….I like the way she presented Audrey only having one scarf; and she learns how to style it in many different ways and makes it work for her. I really connected to that type of problem-solving.”
Cecile Etzbach recalls Cardillo playing an important part in her Breakfast at Tiffany’s-themed 7th birthday party: Cardillo did a reading of Just Being Audrey and signed copies of the book for each child who attended. The celebration took place at a literal Tiffany’s jewelry store.
Cardillo has done book signings at interesting places such as the Kennedy Center at Cape Cod, Books & Books, and a furniture store where they had authors come and they designed “writer’s spaces” based on everyone’s book.
Cardillo has since written two other children’s books, Just Being Jackie and Dogs At Work: Good Dogs. Real Jobs. She said she likes to focus on women who have done extraordinary things. More people will see this in her currently untitled documentary about Jane Chastain that will premiere at the Miami Film Festival in April 2026.
Cardillo received the largest prize of a combined total of $100,000 given to six Miami-based documentary filmmakers in The Louis awards. The Miami Film Festival introduced the awards, an initiative sponsored by the Lynn & Louis Wolfson II Family Foundation, in September 2024.
An avid sports lover, Cardillo said that she wanted to make a narrative film about the 1972 Dolphins perfect season. While researching that story, she came across Chastain’s name mentioned in one line in one book. She circled and underlined it and knew there was a story there.
“I was like, ‘this is a story I need to know’,” said Cardillo.
Cardillo originally reached out to Chastain through email, then social media, and some of the publications where she had been published. Cardillo even tried to find Chastain’s address and her phone number. Eventually Chastain wrote back, later sharing with Cardillo that she reminded her of herself.
Cardillo has been working on this documentary for about five years, even flying out to California and Colorado to visit Chastain, who is now 82 years old in person.
Chastain admitted that she originally tried talking Cardillo out of it, “because I didn’t think she’d ever get it made, but she would not be dismayed.” Chastain went on to share that over the years, she has had book publishers express interest in writing a book about her experience, but it did not work out for one reason or another. “Her enthusiasm and her spirit just endured me, so I decided to let her try,” said Chastain. “I signed a life rights agreement with her, and she was going to do a screenplay.”
In addition to creating narratives, Cardillo works as a professor at the University of Miami where she teaches screenwriting, survey of motion pictures, and a professional development in film class called Inside the Entertainment Industry.
She is the mother of three children, Giovanna, 12, Luciano, 10 and Giuseppe, 4. Her husband, Luke Fronefield, is also a writer.
“I absolutely struggle with my work-life balance,” said Cardillo. “I think it’s hard to do all these things well-and I probably don’t. I take turns with them, but I’ve also come to a point in my life where I think I work really hard. I’m not the most talented, but I am one of the more hardworking people and I think that helps.”
