Ann Hornaday: key obituary facts
Is Ann Hornaday dead? Yes. Ann Hornaday died on October 18, 2026, at age 66.
Cause of death: Ann Hornaday's cause of death has not been publicly confirmed.
What was Ann Hornaday known for?
She was an American film critic.
More about Ann Hornaday
Gender: female.
Occupation: journalist.
Nationality: United States.
Education: Smith College.
Born: 1960/1961.
Occupations: Film journalist, critic.
Title: Chief film critic.
Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post’s chief film critic, died October 18, 2026, aged 66.
She was an American film critic and journalist whose career included work at national publications and newspapers. Hornaday grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, and attended Smith College, where she majored in government and graduated in 1982.
After college, she moved to New York to pursue freelance writing, contributing to Premiere, Us and Ms. magazines. From 1983 to 1985, she also worked at Ms. as a researcher and assistant to Gloria Steinem. Hornaday contributed to the Arts & Leisure section of The New York Times before becoming a film critic at the Austin American-Statesman in 1995. She later served as The Washington Post’s film critic, writing about movies for the newspaper. Her work brought her recognition as a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. In 2017, she published Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies, a book about viewing and understanding films. Her career connected newspaper criticism with a broader effort to help readers engage with cinema, while her posts at the Austin American-Statesman and The Washington Post placed her among the critics writing for major American news organizations.