Amy Heckerling

Directed Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), a teen comedy that became a genre benchmark and launched a wave of careers, after struggling for years to break into feature filmmaking following film school. She went on to write and direct Clueless (1995), a sharp update of Jane Austen's Emma that became a cultural touchstone in its own right and spun off into a television series, as did Fast Times.