Nora Ephron

Trivia

• Nora's first essay collection was called "Wallflower at the Orgy" (1970). Her topics included the Hamptons, beauty makeovers, Jacqueline Susann, and Craig Claiborne.
• Considered to be one of the most successful female writer-directors in Hollywood, Nora has made a few films which flopped in the box office including Mixed Nuts, Lucky Numbers, and My Blue Heaven.
• Nora names Meryl Streep to be the woman whom she most admires in the entertainment industry.
• Nora is a contributor of essays, short stories, and reviews to magazines such as Good Housekeeping.
• In 2002, Nora wrote a stage play called Imaginary Friends which ran at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California.
• At 22, Nora was employed as a reporter for the New York Post and worked there for five years. She worked in the mail room prior to becoming a reporter.
• Nora has been nominated for the Oscar Best Screenplay three times: Silkwood in 1984, When Harry Met Sally in 1990, and Sleepless in Seattle in 1994.
• Her parents' screenplay of the 1963 film comedy Take Her, She's Mine is based upon Nora's letters when she was a college student.
• In a 2005 interview with Tom Brokaw, she stated that even though then husband Carl Bernstein didn't make her privy to the identity of Watergate informant "Deep Throat," she figured it out from clues (including Bernstein's notes referencing the initials "M. F." -- allegedly for "my friend") and was willing to tell her guess to anyone who asked. Her guess was proved correct when on May 31, 2005, W. Mark Felt, former assistant director of the FBI during the Richard Nixon administration, was identif
• She first made her mark as humorist, satirist, and dead-on parodist in book form (Crazy Salad) and in magazine articles.

Quotes

• “Whenever I get married, I start buying Gourmet magazine.”
• “With any child entering adolescence, one hunts for signs of health, is desperate for the smallest indication that the child's problems will never be important enough for a television movie.”
• “When you have a baby, you set off an explosion in your marriage, and when the dust settles, your marriage is different from what it was. Not better, necessarily; not worse, necessarily; but different.”
• “I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.”
• “I think what's unexpected is that you keep reading it will happen and hearing it will happen, and then when it happens you find yourself genuinely thrilled on behalf of women.”
• “Joan is very funny. I'm always telling her she's a fraud: Everyone thinks she's fragile and humorless, when we all know she's wildly funny — and the last surviving member of the Donner party.”
• “Dale the Thug.”
• “To state the obvious, romantic comedies have to be funny and they have to be romantic. But one of the most important things, for me anyway, is that they be about two strong people finding their way to love.”
• “The big cities of America are becoming Third World countries”
• “As far as the men who are running for president are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.”