Amy Heckerling

Amy Heckerling (born May 7, 1954) is an American film director, one of the few female directors to have produced multiple box-office hits. Heckerling was born in The Bronx to a bookkeeper mother and a certified public accountant father. She attended the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan and studied film at New York University, where one of her teachers was noted screenwriter and satirist Terry Southern. She received her master's degree f... more

Amy Heckerling (born May 7, 1954) is an American film director, one of the few female directors to have produced multiple box-office hits. Heckerling was born in The Bronx to a bookkeeper mother and a certified public accountant father. She attended the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan and studied film at New York University, where one of her teachers was noted screenwriter and satirist Terry Southern. She received her master's degree from the AFI Conservatory. She was once engaged to actor Bronson Pinchot. Heckerling's first film, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), about Los Angeles teenagers, was praised for the strong female characters played by Phoebe Cates, Jennifer Jason Leigh and others (The film also led to a short-lived series on CBS in the 1985-1986 season called Fast Times, which Heckerling produced.). Heckerling's next film was a parody of gangster films, Johnny Dangerously (1984), starring Michael Keaton, Marilu Henner and Joe Piscopo, with fast talking... less