Film Forum

Rachel Syme, a staff writer, has covered Hollywood, theatre, fashion, television, podcasts, style, and other cultural subjects for The New Yorker since 2012. Her recent work includes profiles of the actors Natasha Lyonne and Sarah Jessica Parker, the director Sofia Coppola, the Netflix television executive Bela Bajaria, the theatre director Rachel Chavkin, the creators of “PEN15,” and the makeup artist Mario Dedivanovic; an homage to the food writer Laurie Colwin; a look into Nora Ephron’s verbal prowess; an essay on the rise of Barbra Streisand; an exploration of “bathfluencers”; an interactive feature on the art of the Hollywood memoir; conversations with Lena Dunham, Jamie Lee Curtis, Rick Steves, Kate Berlant, Parker Posey, Patti LuPone, Mandy Patinkin, and Barbra Streisand; and short profiles of Kirsten Dunst, Cynthia Nixon, and Anna Deavere Smith.

Her cultural criticism and reported features—which focus primarily on the intersections of women’s lives, artistic production, history, and fame—have also appeared in the Times Magazine, New York, Vogue, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair, among other publications. She is the author of Syme’s Letter Writer, about the joys of handwritten correspondence, and the narrative-nonfiction work “Magpie.” She grew up in Albuquerque and resides in Brooklyn.

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