The Hollywood Ten-Step

Nora Ephron, Director/Screenwriter /Producer/Novelist

1. Was born into the Industry the daughter of writing team Henry and Phoebe Ephron, attended Beverly Hills High and went east for college at Wellesley (class of '62).

2. Hit the Big Apple to start a journalism career, and wrote for Esquire and the New York Times magazine in the '70s, concluding from this experience, "I couldn't afford to live on a journalist's salary in Manhattan."

3. Cowrote the screenplay for 1983's critical and box-office success Silkwood, starring Meryl Streep and Cher, which was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Screenplay. ("All of a sudden in the late '70s," Ephron has said, "it seemed that everybody in New York was writing a script. And I'm nothing if not a follower.")

4. Following the breakup of her marriage to All the President's Men coauthor Carl Bernstein, wrote the roman a clef Heartburn, then adapted it for the 1986 movie version which starred Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson and flopped; married crime journalist Nicholas Pileggi the following year.

5. Produced her first films, both of which she'd written, Cookie (a bomb, coscripted with Alice Arlen) and When Harry Met Sally..., Rob Reiner's huge hit in 1989. Earned her second Oscar nomination for When Harry Met Sally....

6. Wrote the 1990 dud My Blue Heaven, starring Steve Martin.

7. Made a tepid directorial debut with the 1992 comedy This Is My Life, which she coscripted with her sister, Delia.

8. Cowrote and directed the 1993 smash hit Sleepless in Seattle, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, and earned her third Oscar nomination.

9. On the heels of grand success, cowrote and directed 1994's bomb Mixed Nuts, starring Steve Martin. Wrote, directed and produced 1996's Michael, which was a huge hit.

10. Currently set to direct the reteamed Hanks and Ryan in You Have Mail, a reworking of the Jimmy Stewart/Margaret Sullavan classic The Shop Around the Corner, for which she (and Delia) rewrote Wendy Wasserstein's script. (Although she is prolific, she is no workaholic: she aims for five pages a day when writing, and, "If I finish by 9:30 a.m., I quit for the day.")

Amy Heckerling, Director/Writer

1. Born of working-class parents in the Bronx, worked her way through NYU's film school, where, in 1975, she made a short film starring future megaproducer Joel Silver, and honed a characteristic no-nonsense toughness that led her to say later, "I didn't work so hard to put myself through film school to kowtow to movie stars, and all that nonsense."

2. Attended the American Film Institute, where she made the 1977 short film Getting It Over With.

3. Worked as a sound and video editor while developing projects at Warner Bros. and MGM and waiting for the big break.

4. Hired to direct Cameron Crowe's 1982 teen comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High and turned it into a breakout instant classic that jump-started the careers of Sean Penn and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

5. Directed the comedy Johnny Dangerously with the new young star Michael Keaton in 1984 to little critical or box-office avail, then hit box-office pay dirt again with 1985's National Lampoon's European Vacation.

6. Developed the Fast Times television series in 1986, and served as writer/producer on the cop sitcom Tough Cookies. (Also produced a baby with then-husband Neal Israel, director of Bachelor Party.)

7. Used her experiences as the mother of an infant to write and direct 1989's sleeper blockbuster Look Who's Talking, which turned out to be John Travolta's first comeback.

8. Wrote and directed 1990's Look Who's Talking Too and produced 1993's Look Who's Talking Now, towing Kirstie Alley and Travolta along for both.

9. Directed her own script for 1995's teen comedy Clueless, which she researched by reading Seventeen and Sassy and hanging out at L.A. high schools jotting down teen slang. Became exec producer on the Clueless TV series.

10. Continued a personal policy of attending to her child, sleeping late and not always answering the phone, while managing to produce A Night at the Roxbury and working on her own script, Say Uncle. ("I live in my own little world. I have people around me that are tough. If I spent my energy in that place [the business world] I wouldn't be able to follow teenagers around and write dialogue.")

Lucy Fisher, Vice Chairman, Columbia TriStar Pictures

1. Graduated cum laude with a B.A. in English from Harvard and began her Hollywood career in the early '70s reading and writing "coverage" for scripts at United Artists, before becoming a story editor at Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Productions.

2. Hired by MGM, where she rose from executive story editor to executive in charge of creative affairs (and helped launch Fame).

3. Hired as creative affairs VP then production VP at 20th Century Fox before leaving to serve as head of worldwide production at Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope Studios in 1979.

4. Left Zoetrope for Warner Bros. in 1981 (the same year she posed in a fashion spread for Town & Country wearing an Adolfo gown), rising to become senior VP of production in 1984.

5. Oversaw classy projects like 1985's The Color Purple, 1987's Empire of the Sun, 1987's The Witches of Eastwick and 1988's Gorillas in the Mist, developing a collaborative relationship with Steven Spielberg and other filmmakers. (When she married producer Doug Wick and began having kids, it was reported that "such A-list directors as Steven Spielberg and George Miller walked the halls of Warner's calming her colicky first child.")

6. Survived 1990's The Bonfire of the Vanities debacle, maintaining her relationship with director Brian De Palma even after he became frustrated with other Warner execs.

7. Became Warner Bros. executive VP of worldwide theatrical production in 1993, all the while integrating a "real life" into her professional life. After her third child, negotiated a reduction of her work week to three days. Later, she recalled, "Bob [Daly] asked me to go up to four days. I said, 'Is Steven Spielberg complaining? Ivan Reitman? Neil Jordan?' and he said no. I said, 'Is somebody internally complaining?' And he said no. I said, 'So what is it?' Bob said, 'Well, I have to come to work five days.'"

8. Left Warner Bros. in 1996 after 14 years to become vice chairman of Columbia TriStar Pictures, where one of her early exertions of will was to convince Cameron Crowe and James L. Brooks to fire the original child actor cast as Renee Zellweger's son in Jerry Maguire.

9. Persuaded Jack Nicholson to make As Good As It Gets by offering him Fridays off, and gambled that the cost of doing so would be recouped in box office.

10. Credited with tweaking Men in Black, My Best Friend's Wedding and Air Force One into hits which helped make Sony number one at the box office in 1997. (And she still takes Fridays off.)

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