On Monday, after learning the sad news of the death of Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday at the age of 66 from brain cancer, I walked out of a screening full of film critics by Thelma Adams (The Wrap). We talked about how Hornaday was a pioneering female researcher who raised a family, wrote well for decades with thoughtful finesse, and outlasted most of her peers, many of whom now write Substacks or work independently. Daily newspaper film criticism is dying, we agreed.
I used to hang out with Hornaday at Cannes, or at the annual AFI Awards Luncheon, where she presided over the jury. She was always lovely – and fun to be with – but other than that I respected her criticism. I was not alone: her reviews and essays made her a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2008.
She cared about reaching people with her writing, not talking down to them. She published the enjoyable read “Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies” (2017), in which she spoke to filmmakers about their art, including the speaker Kenneth Lonergan on communication, Robert Altman, the master of “realism in sound,” Jack Lemmon on acting, and Spike Lee on cinematography.
In 2022 Hornaday wrote: “Of all artistic mediums, cinema occupies the most difficult space between fabrication and reality, exploiting the porous nature of both to become a third thing altogether: the distortion of the literal truth that becomes internalized as consensus history.”
One of her favorite films, Ridley Scott’s “Thelma and Louise”, features one of her ongoing concerns – women. The film had nothing to do with my real life,” she wrote in 2023, “other than the joy of watching two women blaze out on the land, with zero figures to give and only needing support.
And Hornaday supported the women in her life: “She was also generous and funny and kind and would send random notes praising your work and signing off, ‘Your fan, always,'” she tweeted at former Washington Post writer Jada Yuan. “When she got sick, right after the buyout, she called because she knew I was going to film festivals and she didn’t want me to worry about keeping anything secret from her friends. So, please, talk about Anna. Share your stories.”
Thanks to the Washington Post for much of the following biographical information:
Ann Mills Hornaday was born on March 9, 1960, in Iowa City, to psychologist William R. Hornaday Jr. and his wife, the former Mary Mills, who worked in local charities.
Hornaday was raised in Des Moines and graduated from Smith College in 1982, majoring in government. She spent two years at Ms. Magazine in New York as a personal supporter of the magazine’s co-founder and feminist activist, Gloria Steinem, who died in September.
She freelanced in New York, contributing to the New York Times, Premiere magazine, and more. She was a film critic at the Austin American-Statesman from 1995 to 1997, followed by the Baltimore Sun, before joining the Washington Post in 2002. After 23 years, Hornaday took a buyout in 2025.
She is survived by her husband of 26 years, Lawrence Greenia; their daughter, Victoria Greenia; stepdaughter, Leila Greenia; and a brother, William Hornaday III.
Shortly before her death, Hornaday finished writing a behind-the-scenes book about the filming of Alan J. Pakula’s “All the President’s Men” in 1976 with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as the infamous Woodward and Bernstein, respectively. Hornaday had called the film a “masterpiece” that was “an example of film as a highly collaborative medium, with all the artists and technicians involved demonstrating great craft, skill, taste and understanding.” The book is expected to be published in 2028.