David Schad Ward (born October 25, 1945) is an American screenwriter and film director. He was nominated for two Academy Awards for his screenplays for the films The Sting (1973) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993), winning for the former. He was also nominated for a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, and two Writers Guild of America Awards.
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Life and early career
Ward was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of Miriam (née Schad) and Robert McCollum Ward. Ward has degrees from Pomona College (BA), University of Southern California, and the UCLA Film School (MFA).
He was employed at an educational film production company when he sold his screenplay for The Sting (1973), which led to an Oscar win for Best Original Screenplay. After this initial success, his follow-up projects were less critically and commercially well received, including Ward's first directorial effort, Cannery Row (1982), and a sequel The Sting II (1983). Ward's efforts to sell a script based on the frontier days of California were undone by an industry-wide "ban" on Westerns after the spectacular failure of Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate (1980). He then wrote the comedy Saving Grace (1986) under a pseudonym.
