What goes well with ice cream, a cold night, and a broken heart? A good romantic comedy. But don’t worry, you can definitely be a fan of the genre without those three requirements. No one writes rom-coms better than Nora Ephron, a critically acclaimed screenwriter, director, and essayist.

Ephron was born in New York but grew up in Los Angeles. She is one of the four daughters of the writing duo Henry Ephron and Phoebe Wolkind. Like their parents, the Ephron sisters all grew up to become writers in various fields.

Ephron attended Wellesley College and in 1962 received a degree in political science. She didn’t start her writing career immediately after that. For a while, she was an intern at the White House during John F. Kennedy’s administration. She also applied at Newsweek but was told that they didn’t hire female writers. So she became a mail girl instead. Eventually, she also quit because she was never allowed to write. She later joined a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the magazine.

The New York Post became Ephron’s starting ground. One of her most noted works for the magazine is the news of the marriage between Bob Dylan and Sara Lownds. She stayed with the Post for five years, then started a women’s issues column at Esquire. She quickly became a widely read writer both for her funny and relatable articles and for her sharp and observant profiles.

In the 1970s, she started foraying into screenwriting. One of her first works was a rewrite of All the President’s Men. The script was never used, but someone who saw her script offered her a job, screenwriting for a television movie.

Ephron 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.

Another notable work of Ephron’s was the 1989 romantic comedy hit When Harry Met Sally. The movie tells the 12-year story of the titular characters, from the moment they met up to the moment they realized that they were meant for each other. The movie delves on the question of whether or not a man and a woman can be just friends. The film starred Billy Crystal as Harry and Meg Ryan as Sally. The film earned Ephron another Oscar nomination, a British Academy Film Award, and a Writers Guild of America Award. The film 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.

Following When Harry Met Sally was 1993’s Sleepless in Seattle, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. The movie follows the story of a widower named Sam and a reporter named Annie. 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 over Maggie. Annie, who was listening in, offers to meet Sam on the top the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day

Her third rom-com hit was You’ve Got Mail (1998), which she cowrote with her sister Delia. This was also the first successful film which she 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. The film also starred Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Eventually, Ephron made a name for herself both as a screenwriter and as a director

Other than her work for the silver screen, 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 Imaginary Friends, which was produced in 2002.

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 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.” She kept her illness a secret for the most part, and in 2012, she died of pneumonia, resulting from the illness.

Ephron is ninth in Vulture’s list of 100 Greatest Screenwriters of All Time, cited 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.

Sources:

1. Nora Ephron
2. The 100 Best Screenwriters of All Time
3. Nora Ephron Dies at 71; Writer and Filmmaker With a Genius for Humor

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