Nancy Meyers

Nancy Meyers is the most commercially successful woman filmmaker of all time, described by Daphne Merkin in The New York Times as "a singular figure in Hollywood – [she] may, in fact, be the most powerful female writer-director-producer currently working". Yet Meyers remains a director who, for reasons this book will critique and explore, has been curiously absent in accounts both of contemporary Hollywood cinema, and feminism and film. Despite Meyers' impressive track record for turning a profit (including the biggest box-office return ever achieved by a woman filmmaker, for What Women Want in 2000), and a multifaceted career as a writer/producer/director dating back to her co-writing Private Benjamin in 1980, Meyers has been oddly neglected by Film Studies to date.

Including Nancy Meyers in the Bloomsbury Companions to Contemporary Filmmakers rectifies giving her extensive recognition as an 'auteuse', and proposes that her box-office success, the consistency of style and theme across her films, and the breadth of her body of work as a writer/producer/director across more than three decades at the forefront of Hollywood, (thus importantly bridging the second/third waves of feminism) make her a key contemporary US filmmaker. Structured to meet the needs of both the student and scholar, Jermyn's volume situates Meyers within this historical and critical context, exploring key collaborative relationships and new ways of watching her films.