Watch Amy Heckerling Videos

Amy Heckerling (born May 7, 1954) is an American film director, one of the few female directors to have produced multiple box-office hits. Heckerling was born in The Bronx to a bookkeeper mother and a certified public accountant father. The family moved to Queens. She attended the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan, graduating in 1970, and studied film at New York University, where one of her teachers was noted screenwriter and satirist Terry Southern. She received her master's degree from the AFI Conservatory. Heckerling's first feature was Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982),... MORE

Amy Heckerling (born May 7, 1954) is an American film director, one of the few female directors to have produced multiple box-office hits. Heckerling was born in The Bronx to a bookkeeper mother and a certified public accountant father. The family moved to Queens. She attended the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan, graduating in 1970, and studied film at New York University, where one of her teachers was noted screenwriter and satirist Terry Southern. She received her master's degree from the AFI Conservatory. Heckerling's first feature was Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), based on the non-fiction account of a year-in-the-life of California high school students by Rolling Stone journalist Cameron Crowe. It became an instant hit right out of the gate, eventually going on to become a pop culture touchstone. It also spawned a short-lived series on CBS called Fast Times, with Heckerling writing, directing and producing. Her next film, Johnny Dangerously (1984), with Michael Keaton, was an Airplane!-style spoof of gangster movies, but it failed to catch fire at the box office upon its initial release. In subsequent years, however, it has garnered a substantial cult LESS