The woman behind When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and Julie & Julia, screenwriter/director Nora Ephron is the queen of the late 20th century rom-com.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Beverly Hills, Ephron is the daughter of screenwriting team Henry and Phoebe Ephron. In 1962, she moved to New York and landed a job at the New York Post as a reporter. Eventually, though, she obeyed her genetic inheritance and turned to screenwriting. In 1983 one of her first screenplays was turned into a Mike Nichols-directed film, Silkwood, and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. Her first book, Heartburn, hit bookshelves the same year, and she later turned the novel into a screenplay. Then came Ephron's golden age: She wrote the script for the mega-blockbuster When Harry Met Sally in 1989, then as both a director and screenwriter turned out a bunch of box office successes including Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail.

Since, Ephron earned raves with her essay collection I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman. She hit her screenwriting stride again with the hit Julie & Julia starring Meryl Streep, won a Drama Desk Award for her play Love, Loss, and What I Wore, and blogs for the Huffington Post.

Ephron is married to her third husband, screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi. Ephron's first marriage was to author Dan Greenberg, and her second marriage, to Carl Bernstein, produced two sons, Max and Jacob. [Image via Getty]