Biography: Nora Ephron
Humorist, Novelist, Screenwriter and Director

Nora Ephron was born in New York City and lived, for the first four years of her life, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a neighborhood that figures prominently in her writing. She was the first of four daughters of Henry and Phoebe Ephron, writers who moved to Los Angeles when Nora was three to work in the film industry. Although the Ephrons enjoyed success in Hollywood, young Nora did not feel at home in the Southern California of the 1950s and longed to return to New York, which she always regarded as her real home.

After graduating from Wellesley College in 1962 with a degree in journalism, she served briefly as a White House intern during the administration of John F. Kennedy. Returning to New York at last, she found work in the mailroom at Newsweek magazine and was soon promoted to researcher. When New York City's newspapers suspended publication during a strike by the International Typographical Union, Nora Ephron and some of her friends, including the young Calvin Trillin, put out their own satirical newspaper. Ephron's parodies of New York Post columnists caught the eye of the Post's publisher, Dorothy Schiff. When the strike was over, Schiff hired Ephron as a reporter. The 1960s were a lively time for journalism in New York and Dorothy Schiff's Post, a liberal-leaning afternoon tabloid, offered Ephron a free hand to explore her favorite city from top to bottom.

While working at the Post, Nora Ephron also began writing occasional essays for publications such as New York, Esquire and The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Her work as a reporter won acclaim as part of the "New Journalism" movement of the 1960s, in which the author's personal voice became part of the story. Her humorous 1972 essay, "A Few Words About Breasts," made her name as an essayist. As a regular columnist for Esquire, and she became one of America's best-known humorists. Her essays, often focusing on sex, food and New York City, were collected in a series of best-selling volumes, Wallflower at the Orgy, Crazy Salad, and Scribble Scribble.

An early marriage to humorist Dan Greenburg ended in divorce, and Ephron married investigative reporter Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame. After the birth of their first child, Ephron curtailed her activities as a journalist and devoted more of her time to screenwriting, scripting occasional television episodes and selling a number of screenplays that were never produced. Midway through Ephron's second pregnancy, her marriage to Carl Bernstein ended and she found herself alone with two small boys to raise. Her screenplay for the film Silkwood (1983), based on the life of an anti-nuclear activist who met a violent end, was made into a successful film by famed director Mike Nichols, starring actress Meryl Streep.

The same year, Ephron published a comic novel, Heartburn, clearly based on the marriage to Bernstein and its painful dissolution. A film adaptation, starring Streep and Jack Nicholson, soon appeared, directed by Mike Nichols from a script by Ephron. With two high-profile screenplays to her credit, Ephron became one of the most sought after writers in the business. Her personal life took a happy turn in 1987, when she married author and journalist Nicholas Pileggi, best known for his true-crime stories, including two that formed the basis for films by director Martin Scorsese, GoodFellas and Casino.

Nora Ephron enjoyed her greatest success yet with When Harry Met Sally (1989), a romantic comedy directed by Rob Reiner, starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. The film struck an instant chord with audiences and became an international hit. Ephron had seen her parents' writing careers falter in their 50s, as they both fell prey to alcohol and the fickle fashions of Hollywood. Ephron comtemplated a transition to directing, in part to protect her own writing career in an industry still largely inhospitable to films by or about women. Unfortunately, her directing debut, This Is My Life, about the struggles of a single mother working as a stand-up comic, was a box office disappointment. Ephron knew her future as a director would stand or fall with her next assignment.

Sleepless in Seattle (1993) was co-written by Nora Ephron and her younger sister, Delia. Director Nora cast Harry and Sally star Meg Ryan, teaming her with Tom Hanks. The resulting film was an enormous success, and Ephron was now established as Hollywood's foremost creator of romantic comedies. A follow-up film, Mixed Nuts, was a commercial disappointment, but Michael, starring John Travolta as an angel, enjoyed solid success at the box office. In You've Got Mail (1998), Ephron re-united Sleepless stars Hanks and Ryan in a contemporary variation on the classic comedy, The Shop Around the Corner. Ephron's film also serves as a love letter to her beloved Upper West Side. With You've Got Mail, the team of Ephron, Ryan and Hanks scored another huge success.

In the following years, Nora Ephron pursued a wide variety of projects. She made an unexpected foray into writing for the stage with her 2002 play Imaginary Friends, based on the turbulent rivalry of authors Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy. She took another unusual tack with an offbeat big-screen adaptation of the 1960s television series Bewitched, starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell. Her 2006 collection of essays, I Feel Bad Abut My Neck: And Other Reflections on Being a Woman, immediately shot to number one on the New York Times best-seller list.

With her multi-faceted career prospering on all fronts, Nora Ephron is one of a handful of successful women film directors working in Hollywood, and one whose films consistently feature women in strong, decisive roles. She has also seen all three of her younger sisters -- Delia, Amy and Hallie -- build successful writing careers. Happily married, she still makes her home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.