After a battle with leukemia, writer-director Nora Ephron has passed away in hospital, aged 71. Ephron started out as a writer, with her first movie script being 1983’s Silkwood, starring Meryl Streep and Cher.
She soon established herself as an original female voice with movies like Heartburn, Cookie and most particularly When Harry Met Sally, before moving into directing with 1992’s This Is My Life. She followed that up with the massively successful Sleepless In Seattle. Suddenly one of the few commercial female directors, she followed Sleepless with the likes of Michael, You’ve Got Mail, Bewitched and most recently Julie & Julia. Ephron earned Oscar nominations for the screenplays for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless In Seattle.
Ephron had writing in he blood, as she was the daughter of stage and screen-writing team Henry Ephron and Phoebe Ephron, best know for scripting the film versions of There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954), Carousel (1956). Formerly married to novelist Dan Greenburg and investigative journalist Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame, and with whom she had two kids), at the time of her death Ephron was wed to crime journalist and screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, who wrote such films as Goodfellas.
Nora Ephron – 19th May, 1941-26th June 2012 – RIP