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Nora Ephron, who flourished in male-dominated fields of movies and journalism ... - Washington Post

NEW YORK — Among the injustices about the death of Nora Ephron is that she isn’t around to tell us about it.
“She was so, so alive,” says her friend Carrie Fisher. “It makes no sense to me that she isn’t alive anymore.”

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Nora Ephron, the essayist, author and filmmaker, died Tuesday of leukemia. She was 71. Ephron’s son, Jacob Bernstein, confirmed her death. Her book publisher Alfred A. Knopf also confirmed it in a statement.


Ephron, the essayist, author and filmmaker who challenged and thrived in the male-dominated worlds of movies and journalism and was loved, respected and feared for her devastating and diverting wit, died Tuesday in Manhattan. She was 71.
Ephron died at 7:40 p.m. at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, her family said in a statement Tuesday night. She died of leukemia.
Born into a family of screenwriters, a top journalist in her 20s and 30s, then a best-selling author and successful director, Ephron was among the most quotable and influential writers of her generation. She wrote and directed such favorites as “Julie & Julia” and “Sleepless in Seattle,” and her books included the novel “Heartburn,” a knockout roman a clef about her marriage to Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein; and the popular essay collections “I Feel Bad About My Neck” and “I Remember Nothing.”
She was tough on others — Bernstein’s marital transgressions were immortalized by the horndog spouse in “Heartburn,” a man “capable of having sex with a Venetian blind” — and relentless about herself. She wrote openly about her difficult childhood, her failed relationships, her doubts about her physical appearance and the hated intrusion of age.
“We all look good for our age. Except for our necks,” she wrote in the title piece from “I Feel Bad About My Neck,” published in 2006. “Oh, the necks. There are chicken necks. There are turkey gobbler necks. There are elephant necks. There are necks with wattles and necks with creases that are on the verge of becoming wattles. ... According to my dermatologist, the neck starts to go at 43 and that’s that.”
Even within the smart-talking axis of New York-Washington-Los Angeles, no one bettered Ephron, slender and dark-haired, her bright and pointed smile like a one-liner made flesh. Friends from Mike Nichols and Meryl Streep to Calvin Trillin and Pete Hamill adored her for her wisdom, her loyalty and turns of phrase.
As a screenwriter, Ephron was nominated three times for Academy Awards, for “Silkwood,” ‘’When Harry Met Sally ...” and “Sleepless in Seattle,” and was the rare woman to write, direct and produce Hollywood movies. Fisher and Meg Ryan were among the many actresses who said they loved working with Ephron because she understood them so much better than did her male peers.
“I suppose you could say Nora was my ideal,” Fisher said. “In a world where we’re told that you can’t have it all, Nora consistently proved that adage wrong. A writer, director, wife, mother, chef, wit — there didn’t seem to be anything she couldn’t do. And not just do it, but excel at it, revolutionize it, set the bar for every other screenwriter, novelist, director.”
“Nora Ephron was a journalist-artist who knew what was important to know; how things really worked, what was worthwhile, who was fascinating and why,” said “Sleepless in Seattle” star Tom Hanks. “At a dinner table and on a film set she lifted us all with wisdom and wit mixed with love for us and love for life.”