WBenjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt is an American actor, film director, producer, screenwriter and philanthropist. His accolades include two Academy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. He began his career as a child when he starred in the PBS educational series The Voyage of the Mimi. He later appeared in the independent coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confused (1993) and various Kevin Smith films, including Mallrats (1995), Chasing Amy (1997) and Dogma (1999). Affleck gained wider recognition when he and childhood friend Matt Damon won the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for writing Good Will Hunting (1997), which they also starred in. He then established himself as a leading man in studio films, including the disaster film Armageddon (1998), the war drama Pearl Harbor (2001), and the thrillers The Sum of All Fears and Changing Lanes.
WAlan Erwin Ball is an American writer, director, and producer for television, film, and theater.
WBernardo Bertolucci was an Italian director and screenwriter, whose films include The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky, Little Buddha, Stealing Beauty and The Dreamers.
WMichael Lennox Blake was an American author, best known for the film adaptation of his novel Dances with Wolves, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
WWilliam Peter Blatty was an American writer and director. He is best known for his 1971 novel The Exorcist and for the Academy Award-winning screenplay of its film adaptation. He also wrote and directed the sequel The Exorcist III. After the success of The Exorcist, Blatty reworked Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane! (1960) into a new novel titled The Ninth Configuration, published in 1978. Two years later, Blatty adapted the novel into a film of the same title and won Best Screenplay at the 38th Golden Globe Awards. Some of his other notable works are the novels Elsewhere (2009), Dimiter (2010) and Crazy (2010).
WJames Lawrence Brooks is an American director, producer and screenwriter. His television and film work includes The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, The Simpsons, Broadcast News, As Good as It Gets, and Terms of Endearment.
WSidney Aaron "Paddy" Chayefsky was an American playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for writing both adapted and original screenplays.
WDamien Sayre Chazelle is a French-American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is best known for his films Whiplash (2014), La La Land (2016), and First Man (2018). For La La Land, he received several accolades, including the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Director; making him the youngest person to win either award at age 32.
WJoel Coen and Ethan Coen, collectively referred to as the Coen Brothers, are American film directors, producers, screenwriters, and editors. Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody. Their most acclaimed works include: Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), No Country for Old Men (2007), Burn After Reading (2008), A Serious Man (2009), True Grit (2010), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018).
WFrancis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He was a central figure in the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and is widely considered to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
WSofia Carmina Coppola is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and actress. The daughter of filmmakers Eleanor and Francis Ford Coppola, she made her film debut as an infant in her father's acclaimed crime drama film, The Godfather (1972). Coppola later appeared in a supporting role in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and portrayed Mary Corleone, the daughter of Michael Corleone, in The Godfather Part III (1990). Her performance in the latter film was severely criticized, and she turned her attention to filmmaking.
WMatthew Paige Damon is an American actor, producer, and screenwriter. Ranked among Forbes' most bankable stars, the films in which he has appeared have collectively earned over $3.12 billion at the North American box office, making him one of the highest-grossing actors of all time. He has received various awards and nominations, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards.
WPeter John Farrelly is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and novelist. Along with his brother Bobby, the Farrelly brothers are mostly famous for directing and producing quirky comedy and romantic comedy films such as Dumb and Dumber; Shallow Hal; Me, Myself and Irene; There's Something About Mary; and the 2007 remake of The Heartbreak Kid. On his own in 2018 Farrelly co-wrote and directed the comedy-drama Green Book, which won the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival in 2018. For his work on the film, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay and earned the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.
WStephen Gaghan is an American screenwriter and director. He is noted for writing the screenplay for Steven Soderbergh's film Traffic, based on a Channel 4 series, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, as well as Syriana which he wrote and directed. He also wrote and directed the thriller Abandon and the family film Dolittle, and directed the drama Gold.
WRobert Goldman professionally known as Bo Goldman, is an American writer, Broadway playwright, and screenwriter. To date, he has received two Academy Awards out of three nominations.
WAkiva J. Goldsman is an American screenwriter, director, and producer known for his work on motion pictures and adaptations of popular novels.
WAlejandro González Iñárritu is a Mexican film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is known for telling international stories about the human condition, and his projects have garnered critical acclaim and numerous accolades.
WAdam Spiegel, known professionally as Spike Jonze, is an American filmmaker, photographer, musician, and actor, whose work includes film, television, music videos, and commercials.
WCarolyn Ann "Callie" Khouri is an American film and television screenwriter, producer, and director. In 1992, she won the Oscar for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for the film Thelma & Louise, which was controversial upon its release, but which subsequently became a classic. It was inducted into the Library of Congress National Film Registry in December 2016.
WRonald Lawrence Kovic is an American anti-war activist, writer, and former United States Marine Corps sergeant, who was wounded and paralyzed in the Vietnam War. His best selling 1976 memoir Born on the Fourth of July was made into the Academy Award–winning 1989 film directed by Oliver Stone.
WMartin Faranan McDonagh is an Irish-British playwright, screenwriter, producer, and director. Born and brought up in London, the son of Irish parents, he is considered among the most acclaimed living Irish playwrights. A winner of the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film, McDonagh has been nominated for three other Academy Awards, and in 2018 won three BAFTA Awards from four nominations and two Golden Globe Awards from three nominations for his film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
WPeter Julian Robin Morgan, is a British screenwriter and playwright. Morgan is best known for his work on stage and film and television. He's known as the playwright behind The Audience and Frost/Nixon and the screenwriter of The Queen (2006), Frost/Nixon (2008), The Damned United (2009), and Rush (2013). He is also known for writing the television films The Deal (2003), Longford (2006), and The Special Relationship (2009). He currently serves as the creator and showrunner of the Netflix series The Crown (2016–present).
WConstantine Alexander Payne is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer, known for the films Citizen Ruth (1996), Election (1999), About Schmidt (2002), Sideways (2004), The Descendants (2011), Nebraska (2013), and Downsizing (2017). His films are noted for their dark humor and satirical depictions of contemporary American society. Payne is a two-time winner of the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and a three-time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director. In 2017, Metacritic ranked Payne 2nd on its list of the 25 best film directors of the 21st century.
WMario Gianluigi Puzo was an American author, screenwriter, and journalist. He is known for his crime novels about the Italian-American Mafia and Sicilian Mafia, most notably The Godfather (1969), which he later co-adapted into a film trilogy directed by Francis Ford Coppola. He received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the first film in 1972 and Part II in 1974. Puzo also wrote the original screenplay for the 1978 Superman film. His final novel, The Family, was released posthumously in 2001.
WJason R. Reitman is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter, and producer, best known for directing the films Thank You for Smoking (2005), Juno (2007), Up in the Air (2009), and Young Adult (2011). He has received one Grammy Award, one Golden Globe, and four Academy Award nominations, two of which are for Best Director. Reitman is a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. He is the son of director Ivan Reitman.
WErich Wolf Segal was an American author, screenwriter, educator and classicist. He was best known for writing the bestselling novel Love Story (1970) and the hit motion picture of the same name.
WSir Peter Levin Shaffer was an English playwright and screenwriter. He wrote numerous award-winning plays, of which several were adapted into films.
WMarvin Neil Simon was an American playwright, screenwriter and author. He wrote more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly adaptations of his plays. He has received more combined Oscar and Tony Award nominations than any other writer.
WAaron Benjamin Sorkin is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and playwright. Born in New York City, Sorkin developed a passion for writing at an early age. His works include the Broadway plays A Few Good Men, The Farnsworth Invention and To Kill a Mockingbird; the television series Sports Night (1998–2000), The West Wing (1999–2006), Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006–07), and The Newsroom (2012–14). He wrote the film screenplay for the legal drama A Few Good Men (1992), the comedy The American President (1995), and several biopics including Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Moneyball (2011), and Steve Jobs (2015). For writing 2010's The Social Network, he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay.
WWilliam Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer, and writer.
WSir Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for television, radio, film, and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, Travesties, The Invention of Love, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
WQuentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by nonlinear storylines, aestheticization of violence, extended scenes of dialogue, ensemble casts, references to popular culture and a wide variety of other films, soundtracks primarily containing songs and score pieces from the 1960s to the 1980s, alternate history, and features of neo-noir film.
WDame Emma Thompson is a British actress, screenwriter, activist, author and comedian. She is one of Britain's most acclaimed actresses and is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, three BAFTA Awards and two Golden Globe Awards.
WErnest Thompson is an American writer, actor, and director. He won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for On Golden Pond, an adaptation of his own play of the same name.
WRobert Towne is an American screenwriter, producer, director and actor. He was part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning original screenplay for Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), which is widely considered one of the greatest screenplays ever written. He later said it was inspired by a chapter in Carey McWilliams's Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (1946) and a West magazine article on Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles. Towne also wrote the sequel, The Two Jakes (1990); the Hal Ashby comedy-dramas The Last Detail (1973) and Shampoo (1975); and the first two Mission: Impossible films.