Screenwriter, director and producer Nancy Meyers has been named the recipient of the Writers Guild of America West’s 2020 Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement.
“Nancy Meyers is the writer many of us aspire to be – her scripts walk the line of blending challenging ideas with comedic situations, dramatic themes with hard jokes. Her work consistently proves that movies about the foibles and frailties of humans will be commercially successful in the hands of a master of her craft. The WGAW Board of Directors is thrilled to give her this award.”
WGAW President David A. Goodman
Myers, 70, has been most notable for her outstanding work in films such as, Private Benjamin, Something’s Gotta Give, It’s Complicated, and The Holiday.
Diane Keaton, who stared in Something’s Gotta Give with Jack Nicholson, is scheduled to present the Screen Laurel Award to Meyers at the WGAW’s 2020 Writers Guild Awards ceremony on Saturday, February 1.
Meyers made her screenwriting and producing debut with 1980’s legendary comedy sensation, Private Benjamin, starring Goldie Hawn, which she co-wrote and produced with Charles Shyer & Harvey Miller – an acclaimed film which refuted the then-conventional industry notion that a female lead could not open a movie without a male star.
From there she would play a major part in the film Private Benjamin, in which she would earn a Writers Guild Award in 1981 for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen. Following that, Meyers co-wrote and produced Irreconcilable Differences in 1984 and Baby Boom shortly thereafter in 1987.
She took her talents to the directors chair after having amazing runs as a screenwriter as well as a producer. Meyers would make a more updated version of the Disney classic The Parent Trap (starring Lindsey Lohan) and he hit romantic comedy What Women Want, starring Mel Gibson, who earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor.
The multi-talented Meyers is the highest-grossing female filmmaker in Hollywood box-office history and has a resume that you wouldn’t believe.
2004: The first woman to ever receive ShowWest’s Director of the Year Award
2007: Received Women in Film’s Dorothy Arzner Directors Award;
2013: Received Elle Women in Hollywood Awards’ Woman of the Year Award,
2016: she received American Cinema Editors’ Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award.
