Counting By 7s

Holly Goldberg Sloan was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan and spent a peripatetic childhood (following her Professor father and architect mother) living in California, The Netherlands, Istanbul, Turkey (where she went to high school), Washington D.C. and Oregon.She attended college at Wellesley in Massachusetts (with her junior year of study done at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire). After graduating, Holly went to New York City and took a job at Grey Advertising answering phones and writing at night and on weekends (and when no one was paying attention to what she was doing at work).A year later she had moved to Los Angeles where she sold her first screenplay at the age of twenty-four to Paramount Pictures. Holly continued to write, but supported herself for the next ten years by working in commercial advertising as a production assistant, then a script supervisor, a producer, and finally as a commercial director.The year 1982 was a big year for Holly, because that was also when she got married to Chuck Sloan. They were married for ten years, and had two sons. While their marriage didn't work out, their friendship did. Holly is certain that none of the things that she has achieved would have been possible without his support.Holly has written eight successful family feature films, three for the Walt Disney Company, including the baseball classic Angels in the Outfield, and the soccer movie, The Big Green, which she also directed (filmed in Austin, Texas). She also wrote the Universal Pictures comedy Made in America starring Whoopi Goldberg, Ted Danson and Will Smith, and the late Steve Irwin’s feature film for MGM: Collision Course: The Crocodile Hunter Movie.Holly wrote and directed the children’s film Heidi 4 Paws where she put dogs in costumes in all of the roles of the famous children’s story. This film used the voice talent of Angela Lansbury, Stephen Rea, Richard Kind, Majandra Delfino, and Julian Sands and recently aired on Public Television in the United States and Canada.The mother of two sons, Holly lives in Santa Monica, California with her husband, writer Gary Rosen. She is a sports fan, loves to cook (she is a contributing editor for Amy Ephron’s food blog, ONE FOR THE TABLE), and she has never met a dog she didn’t find captivating.Holly considers her book I'll Be There to be the most rewarding thing she's ever done in her work life. She believes a perfect day to be one where she writes in the morning, takes a long walk by the Pacific Ocean in the afternoon, and she spends the evening with her family and friends around her large dining room table.She likes to fall asleep reading a good book.