7 Iconic Movies Directed by the Late, Great Penny Marshall

Marshall made her feature film directorial debut with this Whoopi Goldberg spy comedy. After accidentally decoding a spy's message, Terry gets drawn into a ring of espionage far beyond her humdrum daily life at a bank. Marshall also directed the tie-in music video, starring Aretha Franklin.

The unforgettable comedy about a boy who magically becomes an adult (played by Tom Hanks) made Marshall a household name. Marshall made history with this movie: she became the first woman to direct a film that grossed over $100 million. It even returned to theatres this past Summer to celebrate its 30th anniversary!

Awakenings reunited Marshall with Robin Williams, with whom she had costarred in the Happy Days TV universe (her in Laverne & Shirley, he in Mork & Mindy). It was a more serious film than she'd tackled before, focussed on the fallout when a drug is developed that could awaken and cure victims of an epidemic. Although Marshall did not snag an Oscar nomination, the film itself was nominated for best picture.

Alongside Big, A League of Their Own is probably Marshall's best-known and most loved film. Through the lens of fictionalized characters, Marshall tells the very real story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which briefly replaced professional (male) baseball during World War II. The movie is joining the recent reboot trend, with an Amazon series announced earlier this year.

Starring Danny DeVito as a failed businessman brought in to teach Army recruits, Renaissance Man was part of Marshall's most prolific period as a director in the late-'80s to mid-'90s. The comedy was classic Marshall, focussed on a funny, mismatched set of underdogs who have to learn to understand and support one another in order to succeed.

Marshall worked with a lot of legends during her career, and this was no exception: Whitney Houston, at the peak of her career, played the titular wife and choir director whose family is turned upside down by the arrival of a real-life angel. This wouldn't be Houston and Marshall's only connection, because Houston was a producer for The Princess Diaries, which Marshall's brother, Garry, directed in 2001.

Although she was best known for her comedies, Marshall was equally capable of tackling dramatic material, as she did with this film, centreed on a teenage mother and aspiring writer played by Drew Barrymore. Marshall won the Golden Swan Award at the Cabourg Romantic Film Festival for the dramedy in 2002.