Nora Ephron, the film director, screenwriter and producer whose hits included When Harry Met Sally, has died at the age of 71.
One of her first screenplays, 1983's Silkwood, starred Meryl Streep as the real-life union activist at an Oklahoma nuclear plant, who died in suspicious circumstances in 1975.
Linda Blandford, writing in the Guardian, described Ephron at the time as 'New York's Princess Anne...not the most obvious person to empathise with Karen Silwood of Texas' who, regardless, had co-written a 'beautiful, intelligent and elegant' film.
In 1983 Ephron published Heartburn, an autobiographical novel based on the breakdown of her marriage to Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post journalist. Prue Leith, writing in the Guardian, was impressed by the recipes scattered throughout the book.
The film version of Heartburn again starred Meryl Streep (a close friend and, according to Ephron in this hilarious speech at the American Film Institute, the best person to play you in a movie).
Arguably Ephron's most famous work is her screenplay for When Harry Met Sally (1989), the seminal romantic comedy directed by Rob Reiner that paired Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal as friends who are destined to be together, eventually. Philip French was impressed by the 'near-perfect imitation' of Woody Allen's early comedies.
In 1993's Sleepless in Seattle, the second feature that Ephron directed as well as scripted, she again worked with Meg Ryan, pitting her against Tom Hanks. It was a hit at the box office, though this time Philip French was less than impressed.
In a 1999 interview with Xan Brooks, Ephron described her romantic comedies as 'fables' not to be taken too seriously (click here to read part two of the interview).
Though none of Ephron's later films matched the success of her earlier work (Michael, which starred John Travolta as a smoking, drinking angel, was likened by Philip French to 'a picture designed as an accompaniment to a CD') she remained one of the most visible, respected and influential women in Hollywood.
