Ann Hornaday, the Washington Post film critic whose plain-spoken reviews made her one of the most widely read voices in American movie criticism, died Sunday at her home in Baltimore. She was 66. The cause was glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer. Her husband, Dennis Greenia, told the Post of her death. She was diagnosed after leaving the paper last year.
Hornaday joined the Post in 2002, succeeding Rita Kempley, after stints at the Austin American-Statesman and The Baltimore Sun. She left in 2025 on a buyout. In between she wrote hundreds of reviews and became a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2008, with her review of “There Will Be Blood” part of that submission. She named “The Hurt Locker” the best film she ever reviewed.
Her reach extended beyond print. She reviewed regularly on “PBS NewsHour,” and she appeared on WYPR’s “Midday at the Movies.” In 2017 she published “Talking Pictures,” a guide to watching films. She had finished a book on the making of “All the President’s Men,” tentatively due in 2028.
Post Executive Editor Matt Murray said readers found in her work “a close” friend who happened to know far more about movies. Colleagues stressed her generosity as well. Former Post writer Jada Yuan recalled notes of praise Hornaday sent unprompted, signed “Your fan, always.”
Her death lands during a lean stretch for her trade. Critics leaving a Monday screening agreed that daily newspaper film criticism is fading, a view that gives her two decades at a national paper added weight.
Hornaday was born March 9, 1960, in Iowa City. Early in her career she worked at Ms. magazine as Gloria Steinem’s personal assistant. She is survived by her husband of 26 years, her daughter Victoria, her stepdaughter Leila and her brother William Hornaday III.
