My Daughter Just Turned 20. Her 18th Birthday Without Her Mom

My daughter Sophie just turned 20. She’s a sweet, smart, funny, strong, beautiful kid who for the last 18 years has navigated through this often cold, cruel, confusing, challenging world without the love and nurturing of her mother. That’s because her mother was brutally murdered in 2006.

Sophie’s mom is Adrienne Shelly. Adrienne died at 40 just as every wish she’d ever had was coming true. She was deeply in love, relishing motherhood, and about to experience the level of career success she worked hard to achieve and knew would someday come.

Adrienne had written a script called WAITRESS. On a shoestring budget, and championed by her producer Michael Roiff, she shot the film in about 20 days. At the time of her death she was waiting to learn if the movie would earn a coveted spot at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

Sadly, she’d never know. She was killed five days before the call came.

WAITRESS became the darling of the festival, was snapped up by Fox Searchlight for almost $4-million, and went on to earn $20-million at the box-office several months later. It was tied with BUG for 4th highest-grossing film over its Memorial Day weekend release behind the big-budget studio blockbusters PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END, SHREK THE THIRD and SPIDERMAN-3.