Author Highlight: Nora Ephron
- Max
- Mar 17
- 3 min read
What goes well with ice cream, a cold night, and a broken heart? A good romantic comedy. And no one writes rom-coms better than critically acclaimed screenwriter, director, and essayist Nora Ephron.
Ephron was born in New York but grew up in Los Angeles. She is one of the four daughters of writing duo Henry Ephron and Phoebe Wolkind. Like their parents, the Ephron sisters all grew up to become writers in various fields. Ephron first broke through the mold in 1983 with Silkwood, a script she cowrote with Alice Arlen. The film starred Meryl Streep as Karen Silkwood, a whistle-blower at the Kerr McGee Cimarron nuclear facility who died under suspicious circumstances. The script earned her and Arlen an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
Her writing cemented itself as one of history's greats with the 1989 romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally. The iconic film tells the 12-year story of Harry, played by Billy Crystal, and Sally, played by Meg Ryan, from the moment they met up to the moment they realized that they were meant for each other. The film earned Ephron another Oscar nomination, a British Academy Film Award, and a Writers Guild of America Award. When Harry Met Sally was not only a critical success but also a box-office hit, earning US$ 92.8 million in North America. Today, the film is still regarded as one of the best romantic comedies ever written.
Ephron also wrote another famous rom-com: 1993's Sleepless in Seattle, once again starring Meg Ryan. The movie follows the story of a widower named Sam, played by Tom Hanks, and a reporter named Annie, played by Ryan. More than a year after losing his wife, Sam calls in to a radio talk show on Christmas Eve, where he talks about his grief for Maggie. Annie, listening in, offers to meet Sam on the top the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day.
Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan went on to star in another Ephron masterpiece five years later. You've Got Mail (1998) was the first film Ephron successfully directed. Based on Miklos Laszlo’s film Parfumerie, the film is about two strangers who fall in love online without knowing that they’re actually business rivals. Ephron made a name for herself both as a screenwriter and as a director.
Ephron also wrote two essay collections, which both became bestsellers. I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Reflections and Being a Woman was published in 2006, while I Remember Nothing was published in 2010. She also wrote two plays, the first one called Love, Loss, and What I Wore, cowritten with Delia; and the second one called Imaginary Friends, produced in 2002.
In 2006, Ephron was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. She kept her illness a secret but dropped a hint in her second essay collection: a list of “things I won’t miss/things I’ll miss.”
Her final film was 2009’s Julie and Julia. Starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, Julie and Julia is adapted from two books: Julia Child’s My Life in France, cowritten with Alex Prud’homme; and Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. The movie intertwined Julia Child’s experiences learning how to cook and Julie’s experiences cooking each recipe in Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and documenting it on her blog The Julie/Julia Project.
In 2012, Ephron died of pneumonia that resulted from her illness. She was recognized as ninth in Vulture’s list of 100 Greatest Screenwriters of All Time for her new take on fiction about the human condition. She is remembered through the Nora Ephron Prize, an award given at the Tribeca Film Festival for a female writer or filmmaker with a distinctive voice.
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