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Dan Ephron Biography & Facts

Nora Ephron ( EF-rən; May 19, 1941 – June 26, 2012) was an American journalist, writer, and filmmaker. She is best known for writing and directing romantic comedy films and received numerous accolades including a British Academy Film Award as well as nominations for three Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award and three Writers Guild of America Awards. Ephron started her career writing the screenplays for Silkwood (1983), Heartburn (1986), and When Harry Met Sally... (1989), the last of which earned the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay, and was ranked by the Writers Guild of America as the 40th greatest screenplay of all-time. She made her directorial film debut with comedy-drama This Is My Life (1992) followed by the romantic comedies Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Michael (1996), You've Got Mail (1998), Bewitched (2005), and the biographical film Julie & Julia (2009). Ephron's first produced play, Imaginary Friends (2002), was honored as one of the ten best plays of the 2002–03 New York theatre season. She also co-authored the Drama Desk Award–winning theatrical production Love, Loss, and What I Wore. In 2013, Ephron received a posthumous Tony Award nomination for Best Play for Lucky Guy. She also wrote columns for Esquire, Cosmpolitan, and The New Yorker. Early life and education Ephron was born in New York City on May 19, 1941, to a Jewish family. She was the eldest of four daughters, and grew up in Beverly Hills, California. Her parents, Phoebe (née Wolkind) and Henry Ephron, were both East Coast-born playwrights and screenwriters. Her parents named her Nora after the protagonist in the play A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen. Nora's younger sisters, Delia and Amy, are also writers. Her sister Hallie Ephron is a journalist, book reviewer, and novelist who writes crime fiction. Ephron's parents based the ingenue character in the play and film version of Take Her, She's Mine on the 22-year-old Nora and her letters from college; Sandra Dee played the character based on Nora in the film version, with James Stewart portraying her father. Both her parents became alcoholics during their declining years. As a high school student, Ephron dreamed of going to New York City to become another Dorothy Parker, an American poet, writer, satirist, and critic. Ephron has cited her high school journalism teacher, Charles Simms, as the inspiration for her pursuit of a career in journalism. She graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1958, and from Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 1962 with a degree in political science. Career Early work After graduating from Wellesley, Ephron worked briefly as an intern in the White House of President John F. Kennedy. She also applied to be a writer at Newsweek. After she was told they did not hire women writers, she accepted a position as a mail girl. After eventually quitting Newsweek because she was not allowed to write, Ephron participated in a class action lawsuit against the magazine for sexual discrimination, described in the book The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued Their Bosses and Changed the Workplace by Lynn Povich, and both the lawsuit and Ephron's role were fictionalized in a 2016 Amazon series by the similar main title Good Girls Revolt. After a satire in Monocle she wrote lampooning the New York Post caught the editor's eye, Ephron accepted a job at the Post, where she worked as a reporter for five years. In 1966, she broke the news in the Post that Bob Dylan had married Sara Lownds in a private ceremony. After becoming a successful writer, she wrote a column on women's issues for Esquire. In this position, Ephron made a name for herself by writing "A Few Words About Breasts", a humorous essay about body image that "established her as the enfant terrible of the New Journalism". While at Esquire, she took on subjects as wide-ranging as Dorothy Schiff, her former boss and owner of the Post; Betty Friedan, whom she chastised for pursuing a feud with Gloria Steinem; and her alma mater Wellesley, which she said had turned out "a generation of docile and unadventurous women". A 1968 send-up of Women's Wear Daily that she wrote for Cosmopolitan resulted in threats of a lawsuit from WWD. Ephron rewrote a script for All the President's Men in the mid-1970s, along with her then husband, investigative journalist Carl Bernstein. While the script was not used, it was seen by someone who offered Ephron her first screenwriting job, for a television movie, which began her screenwriting career. 1980s In 1983, Ephron co-scripted the film Silkwood with Alice Arlen. The film, directed by Mike Nichols, starred Meryl Streep as Karen Silkwood, a whistleblower at the Kerr McGee Cimarron nuclear facility who dies under suspicious circumstances. Ephron and Arlen were nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1984 for Silkwood. Ephron's novel Heartburn was published in 1983. The novel is a semi-autobiographical account of her marriage with Carl Bernstein. The film adaptation was released in 1986, directed by Mike Nichols starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. Ephron adapted her own novel into the screenplay for the film. In the film, Ephron's fictionalized portrayal of herself, played by Streep, is a pregnant food writer when she learns about her husband's affair. In 1986, Ephron wrote the script for the romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally.... Released in 1989, the film was directed by Rob Reiner, and starred Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. The film depicted the decade-long relationship between Harry (Crystal) and Sally (Ryan) as they navigate their own romantic relationships. Ephron claimed that she wrote this screenplay with Reiner in mind as the character of Harry, and herself as the character of Sally. The film has become iconic in the romantic comedy genre, most notably for the scene in which Sally pretends to have an orgasm in the middle of Katz's Deli during lunch. Ephron said she wrote the part of Sally simulating an orgasm into the script per Ryan's suggestions. Additionally, the comment "I'll have what she's having" said by a deli patron (played by Rob Reiner's real-life mother Estelle Reiner) watching the scene unfold nearby, was an idea from Billy Crystal. Ephron's script was nominated for the 1990 Oscar in Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. 1990s Ephron's directorial debut was the film This Is My Life (1992). Ephron and her sister Delia Ephron wrote the script based on Meg Wolitzer's novel This is Your Life. The film is about a woman who decides to pursue a career in stand-up comedy after inheriting a substantial sum of money from a relative. In a conversation released by Criterion Channel between Lena Dunham, and Ephron, she stated "That movie I made completely for Woody Allen." She later stated in the conversation that he saw it and liked it. In 1993, Ephron directed and wrote the script for the romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle. The film stars Tom Hanks as.... Discover the Dan Ephron popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Dan Ephron books.