Celebrities remember Nora Ephron

Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep and Meg Ryan are just a few of the A-listers who spoke on behalf of the late Nora Ephron today.

Several celebrities who worked with the late Nora Ephron took to the Internet today to remember the Oscar-nominated writer-director. Ephron lost her battle with leukemia on Tuesday at the age of 71.

Meryl Streep worked with Ephron on the writer’s first screenplay, Silkwood. They also collaborated on Ephron’s last directorial effort, Julie & Julia.

“Nora was a person whose gifts of mind, amply displayed as a young person in her sharply observed journalistic pieces and in her personal wit, were, when I first met her, kind of scary: aimed and airy at the same time, an insouciant sharpness that could be intimidating, because you could never catch her ’trying,’ everything seemed effortless,” Streep said. “But as I got to know her, I understood what drove her was her acute curiosity, and her desire to observe and find out stuff. It’s what made her great as a journalist, and as a director, too.”

That notion of Ephron being a journalist was reflected by Tom Hanks, who worked with Ephron on both Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail.

“Nora Ephron was a journalist/artist who knew what was important to know: how things really worked, what was worthwhile, who was fascinating and why,” Hanks said. “At a dinner table and on a film set, she lifted us all with wisdom and wit mixed with love for us and love for life. Rita [Wilson] and I are so very sad to lose our friend who brought so much joy to all who were lucky enough to know her.”

Hanks’ frequent co-star, Meg Ryan, added, “Nora was an era. We pictured ourselves inside her dreams and they became ours. All wisdom, wit and sparkle lights, what a treat she was, what a blessing. I marvel again and again, what a life. … To have created simple happiness in people, to have added to the sum of delight in the world.”

Image courtesy of Joseph Marzullo/Wenn.com