Curated playlist
English male screenwriters
- Alfred HitchcockAlfred Hitchcock was born on the 13th of August 1899 above a greengrocer's shop at 517 High Road in Leytonstone, Essex. By the time he died in 1980, his films had collected 46 Academy Award nominations and his name had become an adjective…
- Simon KinbergSimon Kinberg has a small cameo in one of his own scripts. In Mr. & Mrs. Smith, he plays the banker who chats with John Smith at a dinner party. He had started the screenplay years earlier, as his thesis project in film school. That scene…
- Charlie ChaplinCharlie Chaplin was sent to a workhouse twice before the age of nine. By 14, he had taken his own mother to an infirmary, watched her return to a mental asylum, and slept rough in the streets of London while searching for food. Within a…
- Christopher NolanChristopher Nolan does not own a smartphone, and he has no email address. He hand-delivers his scripts to the actors he wants, and his wife handles the rest of the outreach. This is a filmmaker whose movies have earned over $6 billion…
- Raymond ChandlerRaymond Thornton Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and died in 1959, having spent much of the intervening years doing almost everything except what he would become famous for. He was a civil servant, a tennis racket stringer, a fruit…
- Neil GaimanNeil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman was born on the 10th of November 1960 in Portchester, Hampshire, into a family whose name had been changed from Chaiman to Gaiman by his grandfather after settling in Portsmouth. By the time Gaiman was seven…
- Sacha Baron CohenSacha Baron Cohen walked onto the red carpet of the 84th Academy Awards carrying an urn he claimed contained the ashes of Kim Jong-il. He was in character as Admiral General Aladeen. The "ashes" were flour, which he then accidentally…
- Tom StoppardTom Stoppard was born Tomáš Sträussler in Zlín, Czechoslovakia, on the 3rd of July 1937, and he died on the 29th of November 2025, at his home in Dorset, England. He was 88. King Charles, in his tribute, quoted a line from Stoppard's own…
- Michael Hirst (writer)Michael Hirst was born on the 21st of September 1952 in Bradford, West Yorkshire, and he would go on to reshape how television tells stories about history. Before he put pen to paper on Henry VIII or Viking raiders, a chance encounter with…
- Gary WhittaGary Leslie Whitta was born on the 21st of July 1972 in England. His professional journey began within the pages of ACE magazine, a publication dedicated to video game coverage during the early 1990s. When that specific magazine ceased…