Known for her work mostly in some comedy films, Lorene Scafaria became a name that everyone wanted to know about after the release of comedy-drama Hustlers.
Prior to her success with Hustlers, she was able to showcase a wide range of talents in screenwriting, acting, singing and even playwriting. Let us know more about this talented woman.
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Early Life and Education
Lorene Scafaria was born on May 1, 1978, in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, USA. She is the daughter of Gail and Joseph R. Scafaria. She also has a brother, Vincent Scafaria.
She attended Holmdel High School and graduated in 1995 from there. Scafaria was first attracted to write more after regularly winning the Pizza Hut gift certificate in her school for writing a report on a completely fake book. She then went on to write and produce a play named Red Bank, Jersey at the age of seventeen.
For her further studies, she enrolled in Lafayette College in Pennsylvania for about a year before transferring to Montclair State University in New Jersey. She graduated from Montclair with a Bachelor’s of Arts in English while subsequently taking Theatre as a minor subject.
Career: Notable Movies and Breakthrough
Lorene Scafaria was always interested in writing and thus in order to pursue her passion, she moved to New York City. She gradually started building her career by first writing and acting on a play in the producer’s play theatre called That Guy and Others Like Him.
After that, finding writing jobs became harder and harder. She took many minor acting jobs in short films like a Bullet in the Brain, films like Big Helium Dog and many theatre productions to keep herself employed. In search of better job opportunities, she then moved to Los Angeles, California.
There she met with one of her old friend screenwriter Bryan Sipe who became her roommate. Both of them had previously worked together in the movie New Jersey. The pair worked on a children’s adventure film named ‘Legend Has It’. The screenplay was ultimately shelved by Revolution Studies who bought it demanded a much less interesting rewrite of the whole script.
Scafaria got her biggest break in 2005 when she was hired by Focus Features for the adaptation of the novel ‘Nick and Norah Infinite Playlist’ by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan into a feature-length movie with the same title.
She then went on to collaborate with other fellow writers like Diablo Cody, Dana Fox, and Liz Merriweather to write for the movie Fempire. This movie helped her win the Athena Film Festival Award for creativity and Sisterhood in 2012.
She then started getting more serious job offers from bigger studios. She worked with Paramount Pictures for the Iraqi war docudrama ‘Sweet Relief’ and Warner Bros for the movie ‘Mighty Flynn’.
Lorene’s work portfolio got more impressive and she got listed for different successful projects. Her script for ‘Seeking a Friend For the End of The World’ that she wrote in 2009 got adapted which was released in June 2012.
This movie marked as the directorial debut for the screenwriter. She also wrote and directed comedy-drama The Meddler. Besides these, she has also handled various TV show jobs. She is known to be a writer for ‘Ben and Kate’. She also served as the director of the hit Sitcom ‘New Girl’.
In 2019, Lorene Scafaria wrote, direct and co-produce a crime drama ‘Hustlers’. It is based on the New York magazine’s 2015 article “The Hustlers at Scores” by Jessica Pressler starring A-list stars like Constance Wu, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Stiles, Keke Palmer, Lili Reinhart, Lizzo, and Cardi B.
The movie was both a commercial and critical success. The media especially loved and raved about the director’s vision of creating such a movie. To date, this movie has been the biggest hit of Lorene Scafaria.
Personal Life
Lorene Scafaria is known to be dating Bo Burnham. Burnham is an American comedian, musician, actor, filmmaker, director, and poet who first started out as a Youtuber sharing his creative content through YouTube.
He is eleven years younger than Lorene. He is the writer and director of the widely acclaimed movie ‘Eighth Grade’. They have been dating since 2013 and currently reside in Los Angeles. Prior to dating Burnham, it was reported that she dated a guy named Adam from 2009 to 2011. Not much is known about him or how their relationship ended.
After the success of Hustlers, she is in the media spotlight a lot. She also has a good social media presence. She has 12.9k followers on Instagram and 14.5k on Twitter. She regularly posts photos and tweets regarding her work and other personal activities.
Aside from these, she mentioned in one of the interviews that she is codependent and tends to grapple with loneliness which is oftentimes she looks up to friends and family.
Net worth
Before the release of Hustlers, Lorene Scafaria had an estimated net worth of 100k to 1 million US dollars. Now following the movie’s success, it can be estimated to be around 3 million dollars. With her impressive line of future films like soul, her net worth will only increase from here on.