Background

Naomi Foner was born on March 4, 1946 in New York City, New York, United States to the family of doctors Samuel Achs and Ruth Silbowitz. Her parents were both of Jewish ancestry. Her grandparents immigrated from Eastern Europe (Russia and Poland).

Education

Naomi Foner attended Barnard College in New York City, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. She later earned a Master of Arts degree in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University.

Career

Naomi Foner has held several interesting positions in the media. She began her career as the media director of Senator Eugene McCarthy's campaign for the presidency in 1968, then later that year she went to work for the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). While at PBS, Foner served with the acclaimed children's series Sesame Street, and played a role in developing other children's programming, including The Electric Company. Foner's first screenplay to become a film, Violets Are Blue, reached movie audiences in 1986. She followed this with other successful scripts, including the screenplay for the 1988 film Running on Empty, which garnered her an Academy Award nomination, a Golden Globe Award, and a PEN West Screenplay Award for her writing. Foner served as producer for her two later screenplays, 1993's A Dangerous Woman and 1995's Losing Isaiah. Both of these films were directed by her husband, Stephen Gyllenhaal. In 2013, she made her directorial debut with Very Good Girls, starring Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen.

Achievements

• Naomi Foner has written the screenplays for several feature films, including Running on Empty for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay and won a Golden Globe Award for the same category.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Running on Empty 1988
  • Violets Are Blue 1986

• movie

  • Very Good Girls

    (Two girls (Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen), both dete...)

    2013
  • A Dangerous Woman

    (Debra Winger gives a chilling, award-worthy performance i...)

    1993
  • Bee Season

    (What appears to be a normal family takes a turn for the w...)

    2005
  • Running on Empty

    (This is the tale of a young man whose parents were politi...)

    1988
  • Homegrown 1998
  • Losing Isaiah 1995
  • Violets are Blue 1986

Views

Quotations: "Raising a child is the only relationship you have where if you do it right, it will end in separation."

"Time matters less than the nature of the people."

"I am, like everybody else, hurt when the thing I've done is misunderstood or attacked but I've gotten old enough to realize that if you do something, not everybody's got to like it. And if everybody likes it, it's probably not that interesting."

Connections

Naomi Gyllenhaal's first husband was Eric Foner, a historian and Columbia University professor, whom she married in 1965 and divorced in 1977. Her second husband was film director Stephen Gyllenhaal, whom she married in 1977 and from whom she was divorced in 2009. They have collaborated professionally and have two children together, actors Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Father:

Samuel Achs

Mother:

Ruth Silbowitz

husband:

Eric Foner

husband:

Stephen Gyllenhaal

Daughter:

Maggie Gyllenhaal

Son:

Jacob Gyllenhaal

coworker:

Dakota Fanning

coworker:

Elizabeth Olsen

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 166 This volume of Contemporary Authors contains biographical information on approximately 300 modern writers.
  1998