Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal | |
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| Born | Naomi Achs (1946-03-04)March 4, 1946 (age 79) New York City, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Barnard College (BA) Columbia University (MA) |
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Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal (néeAchs; born March 4, 1946) is an American screenwriter and director. She is the mother of actorsMaggie andJake Gyllenhaal.
Foner was born inBrooklyn, New York City, the daughter of doctors Ruth (née Silbowitz; 1920–1968) and Samuel Achs (1919–2014). Her parents were both of Jewish ancestry.[1][2][3][4] Her aunt was Freda (Silbowitz) Hertz (1915–2013), a lawyer.[5][6][7] She was raised in a family of "high-achievingNew York Jews."[8][9][10] HerAshkenazi Jewish grandparents emigrated from Eastern Europe (Russia and Poland).[11][12][13]
She attendedBarnard College in New York City, graduating with a BA degree in English. She later earned an MA degree in developmental psychology fromColumbia University.
She has written the screenplays for several feature films, includingRunning on Empty (for which she received an Academy Award nomination forBest Original Screenplay and won aGolden Globe Award for the same category),Losing Isaiah, andBee Season. She was the Naomi referenced in the line "...what about Naomi?" at the end of eachLove of Chair segment ofThe Electric Company, where she was an associate producer for two seasons.
In 2013, she made her directorial debut withVery Good Girls, starringDakota Fanning andElizabeth Olsen, which premiered at the 2013Sundance Film Festival before attaining online and theatrical distribution in the U.S. withTribeca Film. She collaborated on a script for an American-Chinese co-production titledMoon Flower of Flying Tigers,[14] which was to be co-produced by Ann An andPaula Wagner[15] and based upon the book by Gao Demin.[16]
Naomi Foner's first husband wasEric Foner, a historian and Columbia University professor, whom she married in 1965 and divorced in 1977.[17] Her second marriage was to film directorStephen Gyllenhaal, from 1977 until their divorce in 2009.[18] They have collaborated professionally and have two children together, actorsMaggie Gyllenhaal (b. 1977) andJake Gyllenhaal (b. 1980).
Naomi Foner: "I certainly think of myself as Jewish and I tried to bring up my children think of themselves as Jews."
