34 Facts About Amy Heckerling

Amy Heckerling was born on May 7,1954 and is an American filmmaker and actress.

Amy Heckerling had a Jewish upbringing and remembers that the apartment building where she spent her early childhood was full of Holocaust survivors.

Amy Heckerling did not get along with other kids in her school there, nor did she want to continue to be classmates with them through high school, so she enrolled at the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan.

On her first day of school there, Amy Heckerling realized that she wanted to be a film director.

Amy Heckerling noticed that a boy next to her, that she claimed copied from her papers later on, wrote that he wanted to be a film director.

Amy Heckerling put the thought in my head because until then I would never have thought of saying that I wanted to do that; it didn't seem to be one of the jobs in the world that could be open to me.

Amy Heckerling graduated from high school in 1970, focused on directing and studying film at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Amy Heckerling's father made just slightly over the cut-off for financial aid for the school, so Heckerling had to take out a large loan to cover her expenses.

Amy Heckerling pored over the book, marking off films that she had seen until she had eventually watched most of them.

Amy Heckerling experienced severe culture shock upon moving to LA from NYC, especially because NYC's public transportation had made it unnecessary for her to learn to drive.

Amy Heckerling continued to work on the film after she graduated from AFI with her MFA, using the editing studios at night to finish the project after work.

Amy Heckerling describes casting Penn, whom she first met while he was sitting on the floor outside of the casting office, as a feeling of being overwhelmed by his intensity, even though all he had done was look up at her.

Amy Heckerling knew that this was her Spicoli, even though they had seen other people who had read better for the role.

Ally Sheedy read for the role of Leigh's character Stacy Hamilton, but Amy Heckerling decided that she wanted someone that seemed younger and more fragile.

The film, like many of Amy Heckerling's films, received poor reviews from critics but proved to be very popular with audiences who just wanted to watch a funny movie.

Amy Heckerling, despite being well educated and loving the work of such intellectual writers as Franz Kafka admits that she loves "silly things", which has proven to make her commercially successful in the comedy genre.

In 1989, Amy Heckerling had her biggest success with Look Who's Talking, starring John Travolta, Kirstie Alley and a baby voiced by Bruce Willis.

Amy Heckerling got the idea for the film while she was pregnant with her daughter and further developed it into a feature.

Amy Heckerling says that she loves to write comedies, such as Look Who's Talking, because she notes that when a film is made, everyone working on it puts more than a year of their lives into making it, so she wants that year to be happy and fun.

Amy Heckerling, who loves Travolta, was ecstatic to work with him, though many people consider the film's release to be during the end of a low point in Travolta's career.

Amy Heckerling originally thought of Clueless as a television show because she loved to write the character of Cher who she described as a "happy, optimistic, California girl", and wanted to explore all of her adventures, but after she pitched it to her agent she was told that it would make a great feature.

Amy Heckerling did, however draw on many of her observations, especially the tendency of teenage girls to groom themselves constantly.

Amy Heckerling describes the show as basically the same as the film, only cleaner, and says that she still loves the characters.

Amy Heckerling directed and produced Loser, a romantic college comedy with Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari.

Production of the film was troubled by financial issues, including the rights to distribution being sold off without Amy Heckerling's knowledge, making it difficult for her to sell the film to a studio.

At the time, Amy Heckerling was taking care of both of her parents who were very ill.

Amy Heckerling directed an episode of the NBC version of The Office.

In 2011, Amy Heckerling directed the horror-comedy film Vamps with Sigourney Weaver, Alicia Silverstone and Krysten Ritter, about two vampires living in New York City as best friends and roommates.

Amy Heckerling dated friend and fellow film director Martin Brest briefly when she first moved to Los Angeles.

In 1984, Amy Heckerling married director Neal Israel, but divorced in 1990.

Amy Heckerling has included Mollie in some of her films in bit parts, including Look Who's Talking and Loser, though Amy Heckerling claims that her daughter never wanted to be a "girly girl" and distanced herself from much of her work, never adding any input to the lives of characters such as those in Clueless.

Amy Heckerling is not especially fond of the sycophantic nature present in the film industry.

Amy Heckerling likens the idea to a term initially coined by her brother:.

In 1995, Amy Heckerling won the National Society of Film Critics Best Screenplay award and was nominated for the Writers Guild of America award for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for her screenplay, Clueless.