Richard LaGravenese: Biography

A prolific screenwriter who has long been associated with "women's films," Richard LaGravenese is known for crafting poignant, funny, and very humanistic screenplays that touch the viewer's emotions without manipulating them. In 1998, after years of writing scripts for other directors, LaGravenese made his directorial debut with Living out Loud, a romantic comedy-drama starring Holly Hunter, Danny De Vito, and Queen Latifah.

A native of New York City, where he was born October 30, 1959, LaGravenese grew up in Brooklyn and studied acting at New York University. He began his career writing sketches and monologues for a comedy troupe based in New York and Toronto and supplemented his day job by working on the script for what would become The Fisher King. Directed in 1991 by Terry Gilliam and starring Jeff Bridges as a depressed New York DJ who regains his grasp on life after meeting an ostensibly crazed homeless man (Robin Williams), The Fisher King was a critical success, and earned LaGravenese Oscar and BAFTA nominations for his screenplay.

LaGravenese courted further critical acclaim with his screenplays for the popular 1995 adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess and that same year's celebrated adaptation of Robert Waller's The Bridges of Madison County, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Eastwood and Meryl Streep. After adapting sportswriter Franz Lidz's childhood autobiography into the intelligent coming-of-age drama Unstrung Heroes (1995), which was also Diane Keaton's directorial debut, LaGravenese let the estrogen flow unchecked for The Mirror Has Two Faces, Barbra Streisand's unenthusiastically-received romantic drama about a dowdy English professor (Streisand) who marries a handsome but romantically stilted math professor (Jeff Bridges) and finally learns to accept herself.

Living out Loud was another tale of mid-life loneliness and self-acceptance, or, in LaGravenese's words, "people who are trying to find their place in the world." Adapted from LaGravenese's own screenplay and inspired by two plays by Anton Chekov, the film was a great critical success -- and hailed by one critic as "a romantic comedy for grown-ups." The film's 1998 release came during a very productive year for its writer-director, as two other films he had adapted for the screen, Toni Morrison's Beloved, directed by Jonathan Demme, and Nicholas Evans' The Horse Whisperer, directed by Robert Redford, were released around the same time. In 2000, LaGravenese added another plume to his increasingly crowded cap, this time as the uncredited script reviser for Steven Soderbergh's wildly popular Erin Brockovich. ~ Rebecca Flint, All Movie Guide