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When the world crowns someone as the queen of romantic comedies, it’s tough to imagine their life as anything but that title. For Nora Ephron, though, there was quite a bit more to her than just Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally; she spent years toiling away in a journalism industry that discriminated against female reporters and had to claw her way out of the mailroom just to be taken seriously as a writer.
Though when your parents are both screenwriters, that writing gene certainly lives inside of you; staying in the mailroom was not somewhere that Nora Ephron could remain creatively. It took her quite a bit of time to become the well-respected queen of rom-coms that we know her as today, but it was quite the battle upwards from that mailroom given the timing of her arrival on the journalism scene.
What Did Nora Ephron Do Before Making Rom-Coms?
After graduating from Wellesley College in 1962, Nora Ephron eventually made her way to New York City to try her hand at reporting for a major newspaper, but at that time in the 1960s, places like Newsweek wouldn’t hire female reporters, so she instead was relegated to a job there as a mail girl. It didn’t take long for Ephron to get fed up with this reality, and she eventually marched alongside a large group of women striking against sexual discrimination in the workplace. As a result of this, she wrote a satirical article about the New York Post, and after publisher Dorothy Schiff saw it, she hired Ephron on the spot as a reporter.
After earning her dues as a reporter, she shifted gears to magazine writing, where she largely covered the types of women’s issues that weren’t being written about on the regular in any sort of magazine. She had a long stint at Esquire, a men’s magazine, where she wrote about women as she was surrounded by its arsenal of big-hitting male writers like Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe. Despite those flashy names in journalism, Ephron was still able to make a name for herself—being flanked by men made her own writing stand out and eventually earned her the designation of a must-read when it came to her articles.
The notoriety she gained at places like Esquire gave both herself and her writing some major legs to stand on when it came to pivoting her career to film, but not before her writing made it to the big leagues: books. Although Ephron mostly turned out books of essays, her 1983 novel, Heartburn, which was based on her life, eventually traveled to the big screen just three years after its publication. Prior to writing the screenplay for her own novel, though, she took one first swing at the world of screenwriting with a story highlighting no one else but a strong woman standing up to the world.
How Many Different Mediums Did Nora Ephron Write in?
It wasn’t until the film highlighting Karen Silkwood’s life, Silkwood, came along in 1983 that Ephron finally had the chance to try her hand at screenwriting, and she did so alongside Alice Arlen, her co-writer on the script. The movie also marked her first time working with director, Mike Nichols, who basically led her into the world of filmmaking and eventually became one of her closest friends. All in all, the movie was a solid success and ended up earning her an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay. On top of that, it ultimately led to her longtime friendship and partnership with Meryl Streep, who would later portray Ephron in her film, Heartburn, and Julia Child in her final film, Julie & Julia.
The success of Silkwood not only earned Ephron that Academy Award nomination, but it also was the first step to solidifying herself in Hollywood, as she was able to adapt Heartburn into a film in 1986, directed by none other than Mike Nichols. While this first rom-com didn’t end up reaching the massive heights that her later films would hit, Heartburn served almost as a second-round interview in the world of moviemaking. It also certainly didn’t hurt to have Nichols standing in her corner the entire time, and paired with Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson, the film represented her full pivot from journalism to film.
Her next movie, however, was the big one. When Harry Met Sally changed Ephron’s life in 1989, and as successful as it became, it also served as her first producing credit on a film, which would eventually lead to her first directing gig in 1992 with This Is My Life. When Harry Met Sally was basically Ephron’s essays in Esquire personified, and given that those connected so well with readers back when they were first published, this film practically repeated that original success.
Although This Is My Life was not as well-received critically, Sleepless in Seattle—which came out that very next year—was possibly even more successful than When Harry Met Sally. The film was Ephron’s first collaboration with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, who would reconnect in 1998 with You’ve Got Mail, another one of her classics. However, the years between Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail weren’t that easygoing for Ephron, as she kept having one film dud after the next. It wasn’t until Julie & Julia came along in 2009 that she reclaimed her title of rom-com queen; unfortunately, that was her final film. The thing about Julie & Julia, though, is that it combined every single thing she loved about life, making it the perfect movie to go out on.
“Well, I mean, you couldn’t miss the parallels between Nick and her and Stanley’s and my character,” Streep said in Everything Is Copy, a documentary about Ephron’s life (Streep is referring to Ephron’s husband, Nicholas Pileggi). Food, Nick, Paris, and New York were all things that Ephron loved, but there’s one other thing in Julie & Julia that stood out: the fact that Julia Child’s success came a bit later in life, much like Ephron’s in the film industry. In a weird sort of way, this last movie was everything in her life summed up into one cohesive piece. Though it didn’t end up winning any Academy Awards, it didn’t matter: everything Ephron ever needed was right there in that film.
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