Nora Ephron


NORA EPHRON BIOGRAPHY "So many of the conscious and unconscious ways men and women treat each other have to do with romantic and sexual fantasies that are deeply ingrained, not just in society but in literature. The women's movement may manage to clean up the mess in society, but I don't know whether it can ever clean up the mess in our minds." --Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron, acclaimed essayist, novelist, screenwriter and director was born May 19, 1941 New York City. She is the daughter of screenwriting team, Pheobe and Henry Ephron, who wrote classic screenplays such as, There's No Business Like Show Business, What Price Glory and Desk Set. She is the oldest of four sisters, Delia, Amy and Hallie.

The Ephrons were a family that valued verbal jousting, and in an article in Vanity Fair one Ephron sister compared the family dinner table to the Algonquin Round Table. Ephron grew up in a household where both parents abused alcohol, but she has never let her sometimes difficult childhood defeat her.

Ephron graduated from Wellesley in 1962 with a degree in journalism, and became a reporter for the New York Post. In her autobiographical speech, Adventures Screenwriting, Ephron reveals that in college all she could think about was going to New York and becoming a journalist. She became one of the counrty's best known journalists with her work in Esquire, New York Times Magazine and New York Magazine. Two collections of her essays, Crazy Salad and Scribble, Scribble were bestsellers, along with her novel, Heartburn, an account of the breakup of her marriage.

Ephron was married to writer, Dan Greenburg before marrying Watergate journalist, Carl Bernstein. The couple had two sons, Jacob, 21 and Max, 20. It was the breakup with Bernstein that prompted her novel Heartburn. In 1987, Ephron married Nicholas Pileggi, a journalist and screenwriter. He wrote Wiseguys, which later became Goodfellas. Ephron lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with her husband. HOME|BIOGRAPHY|CAREER |MOVIES|ODDS AND ENDS|SOURCES