Heckerling is a recipient of AFI's Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Medal celebrating her creative talents and artistic achievements.

She has also directed the films Johnny Dangerously (1984), National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985), Look Who’s Talking (1989), Clueless (1995), Loser (2000), I Could Never be Your Woman (2007) and Vamps (2012).

[1] She had a Jewish upbringing and remembers that the apartment building where she spent her early childhood was full of Holocaust survivors.

[3]After her father passed his CPA exam, the family became more financially stable and moved to Queens, where Heckerling felt more out of place than ever.

[4] Her father made just slightly over the cut-off for financial aid for the school, so Heckerling had to take out a large loan to cover her expenses.

[2] When Heckerling was in high school and focused on directing, her father was opposed to the idea, wishing that she had chosen a more practical aspiration.

"[2] After graduating from NYU, Heckerling decided that she wanted to follow her friend Martin Brest to the American Film Institute Conservatory in Los Angeles where she felt there would be more opportunities to break into the business.

During her second year at AFI, Heckerling made her first short film, Getting it Over With, about a girl that wants to lose her virginity before she turns twenty and the adventures she has before midnight of her twentieth birthday.

"[3] Eventually, she finished the film and held a screening that gained a very positive response, causing Heckerling to call it one of the best days of her life.

Thom Mount, president of Universal Pictures, showed a lot of interest in Heckerling but because she was not backed by an agent they could not hire her.

After months of struggling to find an agent, Mount called Heckerling up on the phone and asked her to make a film.

The film helped launch the careers of numerous stars including Phoebe Cates, Judge Reinhold, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

In addition, it marks early appearances by several actors who later became stars, including Nicolas Cage, Forest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz, and Anthony Edwards.

[6] It also spawned a short-lived series on CBS called Fast Times, with Heckerling writing, directing and producing.

Johnny Dangerously (1984), with Michael Keaton, Joe Piscopo, Danny DeVito, Dom DeLuise, and Peter Boyle, was an Airplane!-style spoof of gangster movies, but it failed to catch fire at the box office upon its initial release.

[7] In 1989, Heckerling had her biggest success with Look Who's Talking, starring John Travolta, Kirstie Alley and a baby voiced by Bruce Willis.

In 1995, she wrote and directed Clueless, reworking and updating Jane Austen's Emma as a 1990s teen comedy about wealthy teenagers living in Beverly Hills.

Heckerling originally thought of Clueless as a television show because she loved to write the character of Cher who she described as a "happy, optimistic, California girl", and wanted to explore all of her adventures, but after she pitched it to her agent she was told that it would make a great feature.

To research for the script, Heckerling sat in on classes at Beverly Hills High School where she observed how teenagers acted, though she admits that most of it was made up.

"[7] As with Fast Times at Ridgemont High, it quickly caught on with teenagers and went on to become a significant pop culture reference point.

The film went on to gross $56,631,572 and helped launch the careers of most of the cast, including Alicia Silverstone, Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd, Donald Faison, Breckin Meyer, and Stacey Dash.

It was spun off into a moderately successful TV series, with Heckerling penning the pilot, as well as directing several episodes from the first season.

Heckerling directed and produced Loser (2000), a romantic college comedy with Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari.

After a break, Heckerling's romantic comedy I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007), starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Paul Rudd, never opened in theaters; rather, it received a direct-to-video release domestically, despite fairly good notices.

Though Heckerling dislikes the baggage that the film carries and is upset about it not being released theatrically, she says that the experience was significant for her because she loved working with Rudd and Pfeiffer in England.

In 2011, Heckerling directed the horror-comedy film Vamps with Sigourney Weaver, Alicia Silverstone and Krysten Ritter, about two vampires living in New York City as best friends and roommates.

In July 2017, a musical version of Clueless helmed by Tony nominee Kristin Hanggi received a developmental lab in New York City.

A previous workshop starring Taylor Louderman (Kinky Boots) and Dave Thomas Brown (Heathers) took place in 2016.

Heckerling has a tendency to prioritize the female friendships within her films, along with a larger discussion of gender positioning within teenagers' lifestyles.

[13] Heckerling dated friend and fellow film director Martin Brest briefly when she first moved to Los Angeles.