Nora Ephron

Lived:May 19, 1941—June 26, 2012 (aged 71)
Education:B.A., Wellesley College

Nora Ephron was an American journalist, writer and filmmaker.

Ephron was born May 19, 1941, in New York City and grew up in Beverly Hills, California. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1962. After college, she worked briefly as a White House intern during the administration of John F. Kennedy.

Ephron applied to be a writer at Newsweek, accepting a position as a mail girl after discovering they did not hire women writers. After quitting Newsweek, Ephron participated in a class action lawsuit against the magazine, described in the Lynn Povich book "The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued Their Bosses and Changed the Workplace." She worked as a reporter at the New York Post for five years, also writing essays for publications such as New York, Esquire and The New York Times Sunday Magazine.

She began her screenwriting career in the mid-1970s when she rewrote a script for "All the President's Men" with then-husband and Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein. Although that script was not used, Ephron would go on to write a number of books, plays and movies in the following years, and began directing her screenplays in 1992. She also wrote a regular blog and was a part-time editor for The Huffington Post.

Ephron died on June 26, 2012, from pneumonia, a complication of leukemia.

Speeches