Eric Roth
Eric Roth (Screenwriter) won an Academy Award® and a Writers Guild of America Award (WGA) for his his screenplay for the Oscar®-winning Best Picture FORREST GUMP, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks. He also earned Golden Globe and BAFTA Award nominations for his work on that film. Roth received his second Oscar®, Golden Globe and WGA Award nominations for the screenplay for the Best Picture-nominated film THE INSIDER, directed by Michael Mann and starring Russell Crowe, Al Pacino and Christopher Plummer, and for which Roth won the WGA’s honorary Paul Selvin Award and a Humanitas Prize. He garnered both Oscar® and Golden Globe nominations for the screenplay of Steven Spielberg’s drama MUNICH, and more recently for David Fincher’s THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. Based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, the screenplay also brought Roth another Golden Globe and BAFTA nod.
Roth attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, from which he has won a Distinguished Alumni Award; Columbia University; and the University of California, Los Angeles, where he won the prestigious Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award in 1970, and in 2008 was honored with the Distinguished Achievement In Screenwriting Award from the UCLA School Of Theater, Film and Television.
Roth’s early work included such movies as THE DROWNING POOL, with Paul Newman, WOLFEN, with Albert Finney, and THE ONION FIELD. His first produced screenplay was Robert Mulligan’s THE NICKEL RIDE, which premiered at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. His subsequent credits have included “Suspect,” directed by Peter Yates and starring Cher, Dennis Quaid and Liam Neeson; Mike Figgis’ MR.JONES, starring Richard Gere; THE HORSE WHISPER, directed by and starring Robert Redford; Michael Mann’s ALI, starring Will Smith in the title role; and THE GOOD SHEPHERD, directed by Robert De Niro, who also starred with Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. One of Roth’s proudest accomplishments was having written for the legendary film director Akira Kurosawa, for one of Kurosawa’s last films, his 1991 RHAPSODY IN AUGUST. More recently, he wrote the screenplay for the Oscar®-nominated film EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE, based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer.
For the small screen, Roth served as executive producer and wrote two episodes for David Milch’s HBO drama Luck, starring Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte. Currently, Roth is executive producer, with David Fincher, on Netflix’s first original television series, House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, which premieres in January 2013. Roth is also developing the script for a sci-fi outer space feature film trilogy and writing the screenplay for the epic film CLEOPATRA, starring Angelina Jolie.
In 2012, Roth received the Writers Guild’s prestigious Laurel Award for Lifetime Achievement in Screenwriting.
Roth has five children and six grandchildren. His daughter, documentary filmmaker Vanessa Roth, earned a 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short for her film Freeheld. Roth lives in Malibu with his wife, Debra Greenfield, a lawyer and bioethicist who is an Associate Professor at UCLA in the Society and Genetics department.
