Penelope Gilliatt

Penelope Gilliatt (; born Penelope Ann Douglass Conner; 25 March 1932 – 9 May 1993) was an English novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and film critic. As one of the main film critics for The New Yorker magazine in the 1960s and 1970s, Gilliatt was known for her detailed descriptions and evocative reviews. A writer of short stories, novels, non-fiction books, and screenplays, Gilliatt was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Film criticism Gilliatt began her work as a film and theatre critic with London's The Observer, where she wrote numerous reviews between 1961 and 1967. In 1967, she began a column in The New Yorker, in which she alternated for six-month intervals with Pauline Kael as that publication's chief film critic. Gilliatt's column ran from late spring to early fall, and Kael's for the remainder of the year. Many of Gilliatt's readers appreciated her colourful and detailed writing, while other readers saw her style as distracting and superfluous to film criticism, and felt that her description of films was too complete.

Gilliatt wrote profiles on many directors, with her favourite directors including Ingmar Bergman, Jean Renoir, Luis Buñuel, Jeanne Moreau, and Woody Allen. Although she no longer wrote film criticism for The New Yorker, Gilliatt continued to publish fiction in the magazine. Gilliatt was then married to playwright John Osborne from 1963 to 1968, living at 31 Chester Square in central London in a house designed by architect Sir Hugh Casson. She gave birth to their only child, a daughter named Nolan, whom Osborne later disowned. Following her divorce from Osborne, she was romantically involved with Mike Nichols and Edmund Wilson. Gilliatt died from alcoholism in 1993.