Career Highlights

• Has very movie-oriented family
• Graduated from Columbia University
• Directed TV shows Sex in the City, Leap of Faith, Gilmore Girls, and Six Feet Under
• Helped reinvent “chick flick” genre with stories based on real problems
• Prefers unresolved endings to her films

Career Overview

Nicole Holofcener grew up in New York City and Santa Monica, California, before she studied film at Columbia University. With the help of her stepfather, film producer Charles Joffe, Holofcener got her first job in the movie industry as a production assistant on Woody Allen’s A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy.

Holofcener produced her first feature film Walking and Talking, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 1996. Drawing from her own personal experiences, the film offers a humorous look into female friendships and New York singles. The film won critical acclaim, and made Holofcener an ideal candidate as director for the television series Sex and the City, Gilmore Girls and Leap of Faith.

Holofcener has since continued her independent film career with the release of Lovely and Amazing, in 2002, and Friends with Money, in 2006.

Nicole Holofcener joins host Lila Meridith to discuss her new film, Friends with Money and to answer questions from students at McDaniel College. Students asked Holofcener questions regarding the development of her ideas for her films, if she would direct a film that she did not write the script for, what challenges she faces as a female director and if she looks at criticism while writing.