David Frankel

David Frankel is an American director whose work moves between television comedy, dramatic series, short film, and studio features. He began gaining industry attention in television, directing episodes of HBO’s Dream On, and later became closely associated with Sex and the City. Frankel directed the 1998 pilot, Sex and the City, which introduced Carrie Bradshaw, Samantha Jones, Charlotte York, and Miranda Hobbes in HBO’s adaptation of Candace Bushnell’s newspaper column. He also directed further episodes of the series, including its 2000 episode My Motherboard, My Self, in which Miranda faces her mother’s death.

Frankel’s 1996 short Dear Diary earned him the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. Starring Bebe Neuwirth as a woman reading from her diary, the film is structured around her increasingly bleak and comic observations about her life. Its Oscar win gave Frankel an unusual credential for a director later identified especially with major commercial comedies and dramas.

His best-known feature is The Devil Wears Prada (2006), adapted from Lauren Weisberger’s novel. Meryl Streep plays Miranda Priestly, the exacting editor of Runway magazine, while Anne Hathaway plays Andrea Sachs, a young journalist who becomes Priestly’s assistant. The film co-stars Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, Simon Baker, and Adrian Grenier. Streep received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for the performance, and the film became a major box-office success. Frankel’s direction centers the changing relationship between Andy and Miranda rather than treating the fashion-magazine setting as mere background.

Frankel reteamed with Owen Wilson for Marley & Me (2008), based on John Grogan’s memoir. Wilson and Jennifer Aniston play John and Jennifer Grogan, whose Labrador retriever Marley disrupts their household as the couple’s lives change through careers, children, and loss. It set a Christmas Day box-office record in the United States and Canada, taking in more than $14 million that day.

In Hope Springs (2012), Frankel directed Streep and Tommy Lee Jones as Kay and Arnold Soames, a Nebraska couple seeking help from a marriage therapist played by Steve Carell in Maine. The story follows Kay’s effort to confront the emotional distance in a long marriage, while Arnold resists the counseling process. Frankel also directed The Big Year (2011), featuring Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and Steve Martin as competitive birders attempting to record the most bird species seen in North America within one calendar year. His later feature Collateral Beauty (2016).