Women Writers in Movies

1. Jane Austen

Writer | Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen was born on December 16th, 1775, to the local rector, Rev. George Austen (1731-1805), and Cassandra Leigh (1739-1827). She was the seventh of eight children. She had one older sister, Cassandra. In 1783 she went to Southampton to be taught by a relative, Mrs. Cawley, but was brought ...

2. Agatha Christie

Writer | Les petits meurtres d'Agatha Christie

Agatha was born as "Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller" in 1890 to Frederick Alvah Miller and Clara Boehmer. Agatha was of American and British descent, her father being American and her mother British. Her father was a relatively affluent stockbroker. Agatha received home education from early childhood ...

3. Colette

Writer | Gigi

Colette was born on January 28, 1873 in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Yonne, France. She was a writer, known for Gigi (1958), Chéri (2009) and Matinee Theatre (1955). She was married to Maurice Goudeket, Henri de Jouvenel des Ursins and Willy. She died on August 3, 1954 in Paris, France.

4. Charlotte Brontë

Writer | Jane Eyre

Charlotte was born 1816, the third of the six children of Patrick Brontë, an Anglican clergyman, and his wife Maria Branwell Brontë. After their mother's death in 1821, Charlotte and her sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, were sent to Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters' School, which Charlotte would later ...

5. Emily Brontë

Writer | Wuthering Heights

The dreamiest of the talented Brontë clan, Emily Jane Brontë was born in 1818. Her mother died when she was barely more than a toddler, and Emily and her younger sister, Anne, became very close. Along with their other siblings, 'Charlotte Bronte' and Branwell Bronte, they invented the make-believe ...

6. Daphne Du Maurier

Writer | The Birds

Daphne Du Maurier was one of the most popular English writers of the 20th Century, when middle-brow genre fiction was accorded a higher level of respect in a more broadly literate age. For her services to literature, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1969, the ...

7. Margaret Mitchell

Writer | Gone with the Wind

Margaret Mitchell was an American historical novelist and a journalist. She published only one completed novel in her lifetime, "Gone with the Wind" (1936), which covered a woman's struggle for survival through the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for ...

8. Pearl S. Buck

Writer | The Big Wave

Daughter of Christian missionaries, Pearl Buck was reared and educated in China. She received her university education in America but returned to China in the mid-1910s. She became a university instructor and writer, eventually authoring novels about China, some of which were turned into Hollywood ...

9. Françoise Sagan

Writer | Les fougères bleues

After graduating from high school, Sagan studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. While she was still studying, she wrote her first novel at the age of 17: "Bonjour Tristesse" was published in 1954 and caused a scandal with its explicit depictions of sex, which soon made her known worldwide as a writer. ...

10. Marguerite Duras

Writer | Le camion

Ms. Duras was born in southern Vietnam and lost her father at age 4. The family savings of 20 years bought the family a small plot in Cambodia, but everything was lost in a single season's flooding. The disaster killed her mother as a result. After high school in Saigon, Ms. Duras left Indochina to...

11. Virginia Woolf

Writer | Orlando

London-born Virginia Woolf came from a wealthy family and, unlike her brothers, received her education at home, an unusual step for the times. Her parents had both had children from previous marriages, so she grew up with a variety of siblings, stepbrothers and stepsisters. Her father was a ...

12. Patricia Highsmith

Writer | The Talented Mr. Ripley

Patricia Highsmith was born on January 19, 1921 in Fort Worth, Texas, USA. She was a writer, known for The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Strangers on a Train (1951) and The Two Faces of January (2014). She died on February 4, 1995 in Locarno, Switzerland.

13. Betty Smith

Writer | A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Betty Smith was born on December 15, 1896 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. She was a writer, known for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), Joy in the Morning (1965) and Hour Glass (1946). She died on January 17, 1972.

14. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Writer | Howards End

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was born on May 7, 1927 in Cologne, Germany. She was a writer, known for Howards End (1992), A Room with a View (1985) and The Remains of the Day (1993). She was married to Cyrus Jhabvala. She died on April 3, 2013 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.

15. Anna Frank

16. Stanislawa Przybyszewska

Writer | Danton

Stanislawa Przybyszewska was born on October 1, 1901 in Krakau, Galicia, Austria-Hungary [now Kraków, Malopolskie, Poland]. She was a writer, known for Danton (1983), Television Theater (1953) and A Danton-ügy (1978). She died on August 15, 1935 in Free City of Danzig [now Gdansk, Pomorskie, ...

17. Simone de Beauvoir

Writer | Le monologue de la femme rompue

Simone Ernestine Lucie Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was born on January 9, 1908, in Paris, France. She was raised in an upper class bourgeois Catholic family. Her father, named Georges de Beauvoir, had a passion for books and theatre. He taught Simone reading at the age of 3, and she attempted to ...

18. Lorraine Hansberry

Writer | A Raisin in the Sun

Lorraine Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was a writer, known for A Raisin in the Sun (1961), American Playhouse (1980) and A Raisin in the Sun (2014). She was married to Robert Nemiroff. She died on January 12, 1965 in New York City, New York, USA.

19. Edna O'Brien

Writer | I Was Happy Here

Edna O'Brien was born on December 15, 1930 in Tuamgraney, County Clare, Ireland. She is a writer and actress, known for Time Lost and Time Remembered (1966), Girl with Green Eyes (1964) and Three Into Two Won't Go (1969). She was previously married to Ernest Gebler.

20. Edith Wharton

Writer | The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton (née Jones) was an American novelist and short story writer from New York City. She had insider knowledge of New York's upper class, which she realistically portrayed in her works. In 1921, Wharton became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She won the award for her...

21. Carson McCullers

Writer | The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Carson McCullers was born on February 19, 1917 in Columbus, Georgia, USA. She was a writer, known for The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) and Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre (1963). She was married to James Reeves McCullers Jr.. She died on September 29, ...

22. Edna Ferber

Writer | Giant

Ferber initially studied acting. She then worked as a reporter in Milwaukee and Chicago. Travels through America and Europe followed. Ferber became the author of interesting novels with a cultural-historical background. She often designed the plot in such a way that a female figure was in the ...

23. Zelda Fitzgerald

Self | The Twentieth Century

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was born in Montgomery, Alabama. She was strikingly beautiful and intelligent, but wild and impatient with learning. In the summer of 1918, shortly after graduating from high school, she met an Army lieutenant and aspiring novelist named F. Scott Fitzgerald at a dance at the ...

24. Louisa May Alcott

Writer | Little Women

Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, USA. She was a writer, known for Little Women (2019), Little Women (1994) and An Old-Fashioned Girl (1949). She died on March 6, 1888 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

25. Louise de Vilmorin

Writer | Madame de...

Louise de Vilmorin was born on April 4, 1902 in Verrières-le-Buisson, Seine-et-Oise, France. She was a writer and actress, known for The Earrings of Madame De... (1953), The Lovers (1958) and Julietta (1953). She was married to Count Paul Pálffy ab Erdöd and Henry Leigh Hunt. She died on December ...

26. Ildikó Enyedi

Director | Teströl és lélekröl

Ildikó Enyedi was born on November 15, 1955 in Budapest, Hungary. She is a director and writer, known for On Body and Soul (2017), Simon, the Magician (1999) and My Twentieth Century (1989).