Jennifer Salt

Jennifer Salt is an American actress, screenwriter, and producer born on September 4, 1944, in Los Angeles, California. She is the daughter of screenwriter Waldo Salt and actress Mary Davenport, and has a younger sister, Deborah. Her stepmother was the writer Eve Merriam. Salt's father was blacklisted by Hollywood for much of the 1950s and early 1960s following his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee, before later earning two Academy Awards. Salt attended the High School of Performing Arts in New York City and went on to graduate from Sarah Lawrence College.

Her stage career brought her to Broadway between 1970 and 1971, where she appeared in Father's Day and the musical Criss Cross. Her performance as Estelle in Father's Day earned her a Theatre World Award in 1971. Among her early film work was a role in Midnight Cowboy (1969), in which she played Crazy Annie, Joe Buck's hometown lover. During the early 1970s, while living with actress Margot Kidder in Malibu, Salt collaborated repeatedly with director Brian De Palma, appearing in The Wedding Party (1969), Hi, Mom! (1970), and Sisters (1972). She also appeared alongside Cornel Wilde and Scott Glenn in the television film Gargoyles (1972).

Salt is perhaps best known to television audiences for her role as Eunice Tate-Leitner, the snobbish daughter of Chester and Jessica Tate, on the comedy series Soap, a part she held from 1977 to 1981. Following her retirement from acting, she transitioned into writing, beginning with episode scripts for various programs. In 1998 she took her first consistent writing position on the cable detective drama Sins of the City. She subsequently wrote episodes of Nip/Tuck, and in 2006 received a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for the episode "Rhea Reynolds." Salt co-wrote the screenplay for the Julia Roberts film Eat Pray Love (2010), adapted from Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir of the same name, and served as an executive producer on the American Horror Story anthology series. In 2011 she contributed to the development of an HBO pilot based on Rachel DeWoskin's memoir Foreign Babes in Beijing. Her son, Jonah Greenberg, works as a talent agent with CAA Beijing.