By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
She refuted the fear that powerful women repel men, that funny girls go
home to their cats, that having it all means being alone.
Nora Ephron | 1941-2012
Writer and Filmmaker With a Genius for Humor
Jonathan Wenk/Columbia Pictures
Nora Ephron on the set of her 2009 film, “Julie & Julia,” starring Ms. Streep, seated. More Photos »
Published: June 26, 2012
諾拉·艾芙隆(Nora Ephron)，一位桃樂絲·帕克(Dorothy Parker)式的（不過據一些人看來，艾芙隆要更聰明、更詼諧）散文家、幽默作家，是她那個時代最成功的劇作家和電影人，拍攝過幾部成功的浪漫喜劇，比如
《西雅圖未眠夜》(Sleepless in Seattle)和《當哈利遇到莎莉》(When Harry Met Sally)，周二晚她在曼哈頓去世，享年71歲。
她的兒子雅各布·伯恩斯坦(Jacob Bernstein)說，艾芙隆的死因是急性白血病引發的肺炎。
Librado Romero/The New York Times
1998年，諾拉·艾芙隆在上西區的老家。
1996年，艾芙隆在母校衛斯理大學(Wellesley College)畢業典禮致詞時曾回憶說，對她那個時代的女性，人們認為碌碌無為即是美德。但她卻從事了幾份不同的事業，每一份都取得了成功，而且有些是同時進行的。
她曾是記者、博客作者、散文家、小說家、劇作家，奧斯卡獎提名編劇，也是電影導演——在電影行業，導演這個位置無論是在過去，還是在現在，都被男性一統天下，她可謂是一個異數。她在後期取得票房成功的電影包括了
《電子情書》(You've Got Mail)和
《美味關係》(Julie & Julia)。在晚年時，雖然自己保養得相當年輕，不過在論及衰老和與之相伴的恥辱時，她更像是個哲學家。
“為什麼那些寫書的人總是念叨着，年長比年輕要好？” 她在2006年的暢銷散文集《我可憐的脖子》(I Feel Bad About My Neck)中寫道：“不可能啊！就算你擁有了睿智，可你還是想破腦袋都想不起來昨天碰到的那個人叫什麼名字。”
寫作是她的家族生意
諾拉·艾芙隆於1941年5月19日生於曼哈頓的上西區，是四姐妹中的長女，幾個女孩後來都成了作家。這並不讓人意外；寫作就是她們的家族生意。她的父親亨利和母親菲比（原名菲比·沃爾金德[Phoebe Wolkind]）都是好萊塢的劇作家，寫過的作品包括
《天上人間》(Carousel)、
《娛樂世界》(There's No Business Like Show Business)和
《紐曼軍醫》(Captain Newman, M.D.)。
“一切都是摹本，”她母親曾這樣說，而她和丈夫確實也證明了這一點，他們將大學時代的諾拉寫成一部戲劇中的角色，後來又編進電影
《帶走她，她是我的》(Take Her, She's Mine)里。這個經驗對艾芙隆也同樣適用，她雖然幾乎從未寫過自己的子女，但卻可以對其他萬事萬物做出動人的描摹：爬上她脖頸的皺紋，她的公寓，白菜餡卷餅，特氟龍平底鍋，還有炒雞蛋白的寡淡無味。
她把與第二任丈夫、水門事件記者卡爾·伯恩斯坦(Carl Bernstein)痛苦的離婚寫成了暢銷小說
《心痛》(Heartburn)，之後又把它翻拍成了一部賣座電影，傑克·尼克爾森(Jack Nicholson)飾演花心的丈夫，梅麗爾·斯特里普(Meryl Streep)演繹的則是機智的艾芙隆本人。
艾芙隆四歲那年，她父母將家從紐約搬到比弗利山，她在那裡長大，1958年畢業於比弗利山高中。在馬薩諸塞州的衛斯理大學讀書時，她開始為校報撰
稿，1961年夏天，她去了肯尼迪(Kennedy)總統任內的白宮進行暑期實習。後來她說，在這期間自己最大的功績，大概要算當白宮發言人塞姆·雷伯恩
(Sam Rayburn)不小心將自己反鎖在男廁所時，她要把他解救出來。
而
在2003年為《紐約時報》寫的一篇隨筆中，她說，在所有白宮實習生中，自己也許是約翰·F.肯尼迪(John F. Kennedy)總統唯一沒有獻過殷勤的一位。
1962年大學畢業後，她移居紐約——這是她一直深愛的城市，決意成為一名記者。她的第一份工作是在《新聞周刊》(Newsweek)作信差（後來
她指出來，當時那兒沒有男人作信差）。不久，在同年《紐約郵報》(The New York
Post)罷工期間，一幫人合辦了一份模仿該報的報紙，她參與了撰稿。她的稿件為她贏得了參加該報面試的機會，當時的出版人桃樂絲·希夫(Dorothy
Schiff)說：“既然他們能模仿郵報，就能為這份報紙撰稿。把他們招進來！”
艾芙隆在郵報工作了五年，報道內容包括了披頭士樂隊(the Beatles)、美國自然歷史博物館“印度之星”藍寶石被搶劫事件，以及科尼島水族館裡的兩頭冠海豹拒絕交配。
“我在那裡的時候，郵報是份糟糕的報紙，”她曾寫道，不過她又補充說，這份經歷讓她學會了將文章寫短，以及圍繞報道對象外圍進行寫作，因為她採訪的那些人都不可能給她充分的採訪時間。
20世紀60年代末，艾芙隆轉戰雜誌，主要在《君子》(Esquire)和《紐約》(New York)雜誌工作。
很快她就因寫率真、詼諧的個人散文而小有名氣——比方說在文中，她會談到自己的平胸；此外她也寫文字尖刻、觀察細緻入微的人物特寫，報道對象包括
安·蘭德(Ayn Rand)、海倫·格蕾·布朗(Helen Gurley Brown)和作家兼暢銷詩人羅德·麥昆(Rod
McKuen)。其中一些作品引發了爭議。在一篇文章中，她指責貝蒂·弗里丹(Betty Friedan)導演了一場與葛勞瑞婭·斯坦能(Gloria
Steinem)之間“完全不可理喻”的爭端；而在另一篇文章中，她對《女裝日報》(Women's Wear Daily)的評價極盡諷刺之能事。
但她的文章以幽默和坦誠為特點，風格清晰、直接、低調，對於在什麼地方拋出妙語，她有種完美的分寸感（她的許多文章收錄在這三本合集中：《派對壁
花》［Wallflower at the Orgy］、《瘋狂沙拉》［Wallflower at the
Orgy］和《潦草數筆》［Scribble Scribble］）。
艾芙隆在挖苦自己時，跟挖苦旁人同樣不留情面。她被貼上了“新新聞主義”踐行者的標籤，認為是廣泛運用了小說的寫作技巧，挖掘到了更深刻的事實，但她一直抗拒這種聯繫。她曾寫道：“我不是新記者，不管這究竟是什麼勞什子。我只是坐在打字機前，一個勁兒地爬着舊格子。”
她是個“彪悍的人”
艾芙隆在1976年與伯恩斯坦結婚後，或多或少是在無意間進入了電影業。伯恩斯坦與合作進行水門事件調查的鮑伯·伍德沃德(Bob Woodward)合著了
《總統班底》(
All
the President's Men)一書，兩人對威廉·戈德曼(William
Goldman)改編的電影劇本不是很滿意，於是伯恩斯坦與艾芙隆想試試自己做改編。他們重寫的這個版本最終沒能用上，但她後來說，這是一次有益的學習經
歷，讓好萊塢的人注意到了她。她的第一部劇本是與朋友愛麗絲·阿倫(Alice Arlen)共同編寫的
《絲克伍事件》(Silkwood)，這部電影拍於1983年，根據凱倫·絲克伍(Karen Silkwood)的生平改編，絲克伍在調查自己工作的一家生產鈈的工廠危害公共安全事件時去世，死因可疑。
當時阿倫在讀電影學院，而艾芙隆除了給報刊寫過東西，沒有一點相關經驗。但該片（由梅麗爾·斯特里普和庫爾特·拉塞爾［Kurt Russell］聯袂出演）導演邁克·尼科爾斯(Mike Nichols)說，他一看這個本子，就留下了很好的印象。
1989年，導演羅伯·萊納將她的劇本《當哈利遇到莎莉》拍成電影，由比利·克里斯托(Billy Crystal)和梅格·瑞恩(Meg
Ryan)主演，電影大獲成功。艾芙隆撰寫浪漫喜劇的天賦這才得到了公認，她善於安排一對明明是天作之合佳侶，卻懵懂不知，好事多磨終於有個大團圓結局。
她首次嘗試導演，是在1992年拍攝
《這是我的生活》(
This
is My Life)，劇本由她和妹妹迪莉婭(Delia)合寫，根據梅格·沃利茲(Meg
Wolitzer)的小說改編，說的是一個單親媽媽努力想要成為脫口秀藝人的故事，這次嘗試並不成功。但在1993年艾芙隆憑藉著《西雅圖未眠夜》收復失
地（她也參與了編劇），因為這部劇中湯姆·漢克斯(Tom Hanks)和梅格·瑞恩的合作十分成功，在拍攝《電子情書》時，她再次請兩人出演。
艾芙隆參與編寫和導演的電影還包括
《幸運數字》（
Lucky Numbers，2000年）、
《家有仙妻》（Bewitched，2005年）和最後一部電影《美味關係》（2009年），在該片中斯特里普飾演茱麗婭·柴爾德(Julia Child)。
在合作《絲克伍事件》時，她和斯特里普成為朋友。“諾拉無論是面對何種局面，總會揚起頭說，‘嗯，我怎麼才能把它弄得更有意思些？’”在周二發來的郵件中斯特里普這樣寫道。
艾芙隆分別因為電影《絲克伍事件》、《西雅圖未眠夜》和《當哈利遇到莎莉》，三次獲得奧斯卡最佳編劇獎提名，不過在從事電影生涯時，她也從未放棄過其他形式的寫作。她的兩部散文合集，
《我可憐的脖子：以及其他身為女人的感想》（I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Reflections on Being a Woman，2006年）和《我什麼都記不住了》（I Remember Nothing，2010年），都是暢銷書。
幾年前，艾芙隆得知自己罹患骨髓增生異常綜合征，這是一種將轉歸為白血病的病症，但她把病情隱瞞了下來，繼續過着忙碌、交友廣闊的生活，只有幾個身邊人知道這個消息。
“她這人不喜歡抱怨，”作家薩莉·奎恩(Sally Quinn)在周二說道：“她不喜歡自怨自艾，總是把什麼事情都‘自己吞進肚裡’。”
艾芙隆與作家丹·格林伯格(Dan Greenburg)的第一段婚姻以離婚告終，與伯恩斯坦的婚姻同樣如此。1987年，她嫁給了尼古拉斯·派勒吉(Nicholas Pileggi)，他是
《盜亦有道》(Wiseguy)和
《賭城風雲》(Casino)的作者。
艾芙隆的家人包括丈夫派勒吉；兩個兒子，一個是雅各布·伯恩斯坦，他是個記者，常常為《紐約時報》的風尚欄目撰稿，另一個是麥克斯·伯恩斯坦，他是
搖滾音樂人。還有三位妹妹，分別是迪莉婭·艾芙隆；艾米·艾芙隆(Amy
Ephron)，同樣是劇作家；以及做記者和小說家的哈莉·艾芙隆(Hallie Ephron)。
她的另一位朋友羅伯特·哥特列布(Robert
Gottlieb)，自從20世紀70年代起就開始編輯她的著作，他稱艾芙隆的死“對她的讀者、她的電影觀眾和她的同事，是件很可怕的事情”。他又補充
說，但“私下裡的諾拉甚至要更加了不起，永遠全心全意伴隨在你左右，同時又能為你注入一劑必要的現實的清醒劑”。
梅爾.斯特里普稱她為一個“彪悍的人”。
“她什麼都能幫上忙：醫生、餐館、食譜、演講，或者只是幾個小玩笑，我們時不時就會互相開幾句玩笑，”在電子郵件中斯特里普說：“在好好享受生活的方方面面上，她都是行家裡手。”
翻譯：詹涓
Nora Ephron,
an essayist and humorist in the Dorothy Parker mold (only smarter and
funnier, some said) who became one of her era’s most successful
screenwriters and filmmakers, making romantic comedy hits like
“Sleepless in Seattle” and “When Harry Met Sally,” died Tuesday night in Manhattan. She was 71.
Librado Romero/The New York Times
Nora Ephron in 1998 on home turf, the Upper West Side.
More Photos »
The cause was pneumonia brought on by acute myeloid leukemia, her son Jacob Bernstein said.
In a commencement address she delivered in 1996 at Wellesley College,
her alma mater, Ms. Ephron recalled that women of her generation weren’t
expected to do much of anything. But she wound up having several
careers, all of them successfully and many of them simultaneously.
She was a journalist, a blogger, an essayist, a novelist, a playwright,
an Oscar-nominated screenwriter and a movie director — a rarity in a
film industry whose directorial ranks were and continue to be dominated
by men. Her later box-office success included
“You’ve Got Mail” and
“Julie & Julia.”
By the end of her life, though remaining remarkably youthful looking,
she had even become something of a philosopher about age and its
indignities.
“Why do people write books that say it’s better to be older than to be
younger?” she wrote in “I Feel Bad About My Neck,” her 2006 best-selling
collection of essays. “It’s not better. Even if you have all your
marbles, you’re constantly reaching for the name of the person you met
the day before yesterday.”
Nora Ephron
was born on May 19, 1941, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the
eldest of four sisters, all of whom became writers. That was no
surprise; writing was the family business. Her father, Henry, and her
mother, the former Phoebe Wolkind, were Hollywood screenwriters who
wrote, among other films,
“Carousel,” “There’s No Business Like Show Business” and
“Captain Newman, M.D.”
“Everything is copy,” her mother once said, and she and her husband
proved it by turning the college-age Nora into a character in a play,
later a movie,
“Take Her, She’s Mine.”
The lesson was not lost on Ms. Ephron, who seldom wrote about her own
children but could make sparkling copy out of almost anything else: the
wrinkles on her neck, her apartment, cabbage strudel, Teflon pans and
the tastelessness of egg-white omelets.
She turned her painful breakup with her second husband, the Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, into a best-selling novel,
“Heartburn,”
which she then recycled into a successful movie starring Jack Nicholson
as a philandering husband and Meryl Streep as a quick-witted version of
Ms. Ephron herself.
When Ms. Ephron was 4, her parents moved from New York to Beverly Hills,
where she grew up, graduating from Beverly Hills High School in 1958.
At Wellesley, she began writing for the school newspaper, and in the
summer of 1961 she was a summer intern in the Kennedy White House. She
said later that perhaps her greatest accomplishment there was rescuing
the speaker of the house, Sam Rayburn, from a men’s room in which he had
inadvertently locked himself.
In an essay for The New York Times in 2003, she said she was also probably the only intern that President John F. Kennedy had never hit on.
After graduation from college in 1962, she moved to New York, a city she
always adored, intent on becoming a journalist. Her first job was as a
mail girl at Newsweek. (There were no mail boys, she later pointed out.)
Soon she was contributing to a parody of The New York Post put out
during the 1962 newspaper strike. Her piece of it earned her a tryout at
The Post, where the publisher, Dorothy Schiff, remarked: “If they can
parody The Post, they can write for it. Hire them.”
Ms. Ephron stayed at The Post for five years, covering stories like the
Beatles, the Star of India robbery at the American Museum of Natural
History, and a pair of hooded seals at the Coney Island aquarium that
refused to mate.
“The Post was a terrible newspaper in the era I worked there,” she
wrote, but added that the experience taught her to write short and to
write around a subject, since the kinds of people she was assigned to
cover were never going to give her much interview time.
In the late 1960s Ms. Ephron turned to magazine journalism, at Esquire
and New York mostly. She quickly made a name for herself by writing
frank, funny personal essays — about the smallness of her breasts, for
example — and tart, sharply observed profiles of people like Ayn Rand,
Helen Gurley Brown and the composer and best-selling poet Rod McKuen.
Some of these articles were controversial. In one, she criticized Betty
Friedan for conducting a “thoroughly irrational” feud with Gloria
Steinem; in another, she discharged a withering assessment of Women’s
Wear Daily.
But all her articles were characterized by humor and honesty, written in
a clear, direct, understated style marked by an impeccable sense of
when to deploy the punchline. (Many of her articles were assembled in
the collections “Wallflower at the Orgy,” “Crazy Salad” and “Scribble
Scribble.”)
Ms. Ephron made as much fun of herself as of anyone else. She was
labeled a practitioner of the New Journalism, with its embrace of
novelistic devices in the name of reaching a deeper truth, but she
always denied the connection. “I am not a new journalist, whatever that
is,” she once wrote. “I just sit here at the typewriter and bang away at
the old forms.”
Ms. Ephron got into the movie business more or less by accident after
her marriage to Mr. Bernstein in 1976. He and Bob Woodward, his partner
in the Watergate investigation, were unhappy with William Goldman’s
script for the movie version of their book
“All the President’s Men,”
so Mr. Bernstein and Ms. Ephron took a stab at rewriting it. Their
version was ultimately not used, but it was a useful learning
experience, she later said, and it brought her to the attention of
people in Hollywood.
Her first screenplay, written with her friend Alice Arlen, was for
“Silkwood,”
a 1983 film based on the life of Karen Silkwood, who died under
suspicious circumstances while investigating abuses at a plutonium plant
where she had worked. Ms. Arlen was in film school then, and Ms. Ephron
had scant experience writing for anything other than the page. But Mike
Nichols, who directed the movie (which starred Ms. Streep and Kurt
Russell), said that the script made an immediate impression on him. He
and Ms. Ephron had become friends when she visited him on the set of
“Catch-22.”
“I think that was the beginning of her openly falling in love with the
movies,” Mr. Nichols said in an interview, “and she and Alice came along
with ‘Silkwood’ when I hadn’t made a movie in seven years. I couldn’t
find anything that grabbed me.” He added: “Nora was so funny and so
interesting that you didn’t notice that she was also necessary. I think a
lot of her friends and readers will feel that.”
Ms. Ephron followed “Silkwood” three years later with a screenplay
adaptation of her own novel “Heartburn,” which was also directed by Mr.
Nichols. But it was her script for “When Harry Met Sally,” which became a
hit Rob Reiner movie in 1989 starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, that
established Ms. Ephron’s gift for romantic comedy and for delayed but
happy endings that reconcile couples who are clearly meant for each
other but don’t know it.
The scene wouldn’t have gotten past the Hollywood censors of the past,
but in many other respects Ms. Ephron’s films are old-fashioned movies,
only in a brand-new guise. Her 1998 hit, “You’ve Got Mail,” for example,
which she both wrote (with her sister Delia) and directed, is partly a
remake of the old Ernst Lubitsch film ‘The Shop Around the Corner.”
Ms. Ephron began directing because she knew from her parents’ example
how powerless screenwriters are (at the end of their careers both became
alcoholics) and because, as she said in her Wellesley address,
Hollywood had never been very interested in making movies by or about
women. She once wrote, “One of the best things about directing movies,
as opposed to merely writing them, is that there’s no confusion about
who’s to blame: you are.”
Mr. Nichols said he had encouraged her to direct. “I knew she would be
able to do it,” he recalled. “Not only did she have a complete
comprehension of the process of making a movie — she simply soaked that
up — but she had all the ancillary skills, the people skills, all the
hundreds of things that are useful when you’re making a movie.”
Her first effort at directing,
“This Is My Life”
(1992), with a screenplay by Ms. Ephron and her sister Delia, based on a
novel by Meg Wolitzer about a single mother trying to become a standup
comedian, was a dud. But Ms. Ephron redeemed herself in 1993 with
“Sleepless in Seattle” (she shared the screenwriting credits), which
brought Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan together so winningly that they were cast
again in “You’ve Got Mail.”
Among the other movies Ms. Ephron wrote and directed were
“Lucky Numbers” (2000),
“Bewitched” (2005) and, her last, “Julie & Julia” (2009), in which Ms. Streep played Julia Child.
She and Ms. Streep had been friends since they worked on “Silkwood”
together. “Nora just looked at every situation and cocked her head and
thought, ‘Hmmmm, how can I make this more fun?’ ” Ms. Streep wrote in an
e-mail on Tuesday.
Ms. Ephron earned three Oscar nominations for best screenplay, for
“Silkwood,” “Sleepless in Seattle” and “When Harry Met Sally.” But in
all her moviemaking years she never gave up writing in other forms. Two
essay collections,
“I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Reflections on Being a Woman”
(2006) and “I Remember Nothing” (2010), were both best sellers. With
her sister Delia she wrote a play, “Love, Loss, and What I Wore,” about
women and their wardrobes (once calling it “ ‘The Vagina Monologues’
without the vaginas”) and by herself she wrote
“Imaginary Friends,” a play, produced in 2002, about the literary and personal quarrel between Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy.
She also became an enthusiastic blogger for The Huffington Post, writing
on subjects like the Las Vegas mogul Steve Wynn’s accidentally putting a
hole in a Picasso he owned and Ryan ONeal’s failing to recognize his
own daughter and making a pass at her.
Several years ago, Ms. Ephron learned that she had myelodysplastic
syndrome, a pre-leukemic condition, but she kept the illness a secret
from all but a few intimates and continued to lead a busy, sociable
life.
“She had this thing about not wanting to whine,” the writer Sally Quinn
said on Tuesday. “She didn’t like self-pity. It was always, you know,
‘Suck it up.’ ”
Ms. Ephron’s first marriage, to the writer Dan Greenburg, ended in
divorce, as did her marriage to Mr. Bernstein. In 1987 she married
Nicholas Pileggi, the author of the books
“Wiseguy” and
“Casino.”
(Her contribution to “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs
by Writers Famous and Obscure,” edited by Larry Smith, reads: “Secret to
life, marry an Italian.”)
In addition to her son Jacob Bernstein, a journalist who writes
frequently for the Styles section of The Times, Ms. Ephron is survived
by Mr. Pileggi; another son, Max Bernstein, a rock musician; and her
sisters Delia Ephron; Amy Ephron, who is also a screenwriter; and Hallie
Ephron, a journalist and novelist.
In person Ms. Ephron — small and fine-boned with high cheeks and a
toothy smile — had the same understated, though no less witty, style
that she brought to the page.
“Sitting at a table with Nora was like being in a Nora Ephron movie,” Ms. Quinn said. “She was brilliant and funny.”
She was also fussy about her hair and made a point of having it
professionally blow-dried twice a week. “It’s cheaper by far than
psychoanalysis and much more uplifting,” Ms. Ephron said.
Another friend, Robert Gottlieb, who had edited her books since the
1970s, said that her death would be “terrible for her readers and her
movie audience and her colleagues.” But “the private Nora was even more
remarkable,” he added, saying she was “always there for you with a full
heart plus the crucial dose of the reality principle.”
Ms. Streep called her a “stalwart.”
“You could call on her for anything: doctors, restaurants, recipes,
speeches, or just a few jokes, and we all did it, constantly,” she wrote
in her e-mail. “She was an expert in all the departments of living
well.”
The producer Scott Rudin recalled that less than two weeks before her
death, he had a long phone session with her from the hospital while she
was undergoing treatment, going over notes for a pilot she was writing
for a TV series about a bank compliance officer. Afterward she told him,
“If I could just get a hairdresser in here, we could have a meeting.”
Ms. Ephron’s collection “I Remember Nothing” concludes with two lists,
one of things she says she won’t miss and one of things she will. Among
the “won’t miss” items are dry skin, Clarence Thomas, the sound of the
vacuum cleaner, and panels on
“Women in Film.” The other list, of the things she will miss, begins with “my kids” and “Nick” and ends this way:
“Taking a bath
Coming over the bridge to Manhattan
Pie.”
Paul Vitello contributed reporting.
“everything is copy,”--諾拉•艾芙隆的最後一幕Nora Ephron’s Final Act
JACOB BERNSTEIN 2013年03月30日
周五晚上10点，在位于纽约第68街和约克大道的长老会医院第14层一间单人病房的床上，我的母亲躺在床上，眼前出现了幻觉。像许多处于弥留之际的人们一样，她已经进入了一个梦幻世界。
美國名導艾芙朗逝世 享壽71歲 【10:25】
美國知名導演及編劇艾芙朗，因白血病所引發的肺炎去世，享壽71歲。（路透社）
〔本報訊〕美國知名導演及編劇艾芙朗（Nora Ephron），驚傳因急性骨髓性白血病所引發的肺炎去世，享壽71歲。
執導家喻戶曉電影《電子情書》（You've Got
Mail）和《神仙家庭》（Bewitched）的導演艾芙朗，原本是紐約時報的記者，後來她改當編劇，浪漫喜劇作品如《當哈利碰上莎莉》（When
Harry Met Sally）和《西雅圖夜未眠》（Sleepless in
Seattle），都曾入圍奧斯卡金像獎最佳原創劇本獎，而她在《美味關係》（Julie &
Julia）中身兼編劇和導演，該片也讓美國巨星梅莉史翠普（Meryl Streep）奪下2010奧斯卡最佳女主角。
艾芙朗的父母也都是編劇，艾芙朗曾在2009 CNN訪談中說：「我的父母很風趣，且他們相信，任何在生命中發生的事都可以變成一個好故事，而這就是幽默守則的第一條。」她也表示：「我不認為你可以完全無幽默感來度過任何事情。」
艾芙朗於1987年，剛好也是她跟前夫卡爾·伯恩斯坦（Carl Bernstein）離婚八年的時候，嫁給美國作家尼可拉斯皮利奇（Nicholas
Pileggi），他是知名《賭城風雲》（Casino）、《四海好傢伙》（Wiseguy）的作者，兩部作品也皆被改拍成電影。
對於艾芙朗的死訊，出版社亞飛諾普（Alfred A.
Knopf）至上敬意：「她帶給許多生活不如意的人數不清的歡樂，她將會被永遠記得。」美國紐約市長彭博Bloomberg說：「從艾芙朗早期在紐約時報
到他後來在好萊塢的成就，她熱愛任何一個紐約的故事，而她也可以將他們轉述成像她自己的故事一樣精彩。」
