Cody’s career change

What happened

Diablo Cody’s first screenplay, for the teen-pregnancy hit Juno, won her an Oscar and completed a meteoric rise to fame. Along with critical acclaim, Juno has made more than $100 million at the domestic box office, making it one of the most lucrative Oscar nominees this year. “"I want to thank my family,” Cody said at the Oscars, wearing a leopard-print shift that exposed her tattooed arm, “for loving me exactly the way I am."

What the commentators said

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Now, that was one “unlikely journey,” said Diane Garrett in Variety. The former stripper went from blogger to award-winning screenwriter in a heartbeat -- she won an Indie Spirit Award over the weekend, before the Oscars. And she has more big-time projects in the works already.

“Not long before writing ‘Juno,’” said Bill Zwecker in the Chicago Sun-Times, “Cody was a stripper in Minnesota,” with an “eclectic resume also includes being prom queen.” Admirers are hounding her for a movie about her own life, but that will have to wait until she’s finished with the horror-comedy “Jennifer’s Body,” starring Megan Fox, and the Showtime pilot she’s working on with Steven Spielberg.

To think it all started in August 2004 when a Hollywood manager-producer was “Googling profane names for the female anatomy,” said the Los Angeles Times. The producer, Mason Novick, stumbled upon the blog of a stripper named Brook Busey -- a.k.a. Diablo Cody -- and likes her writing style. She sends him an autobiographical account of her sex-industry experiences -- and that gets published -- then she sends him a script, and that wins an Oscar.