Great Jewish screenwriter Nora Ephron died on Tuesday at age 71. Alfred A. Knopf, her book publisher, said in a press release that Ephron died of leukemia. Her son, Jacob Bernstein, told the New York Times she had died of pneumonia brought on by her leukemia.
Screenwriter of When Harry Met Sally (1989) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993), both of which films earned her Oscar nominations, Ephron was born on May 19, 1941, in New York, to a Broadway playwright and Hollywood screenwriter. She said she was taught from a young age to “take notes. Everything is copy.”
As a Journalist, she wrote for New York Magazine, the New York Post and the New York Times. Her books included the novel Heartburn, a frank tale of her marriage to noted Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein.
Ephron was also married to Dan Greenberg and to Nicholas Pileggi, who survives her, along with her two sons.
Her last film, Julia and Julia, which she wrote and directed, was released in 2009, starring her close friend, Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep. The pair had formerly worked together on the 1983 film Silkwood.