James L. Brooks

Early life

James Lawrence Brooks was born on May 9, 1940, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, and raised in North Bergen, New Jersey. His parents, Dorothy Helen (née Sheinheit) and Edward M. Brooks, were both salespeople (his mother sold children's clothes; his father furniture). The Brooks family was Jewish; Edward Brooks changed his surname from Bernstein and claimed to be Irish. Brooks's father abandoned his mother when he found out she was pregnant with him, and lost contact with his son when Brooks was twelve. During the pregnancy, Brooks' father sent his wife a postcard stating that "If it's a boy, name him Jim." His mother died when he was 22. He has described his early life as "tough" with a "broken home, [and him being] poor and sort of lonely, that sort of stuff," later adding: "My father was sort of in-and-out and my mother worked long hours, so there was no choice but for me to be alone in the apartment a lot." He has an older sister, Diane, who helped look after him as a child and to whom he dedicated As Good as It Gets.

Brooks spent much of his childhood "surviving" and reading numerous comedic and scripted works, as well as writing. He sent comedic short stories out to publishers, and occasionally got positive responses, although none were published, and he did not believe he could make a career as a writer. Brooks attended Weehawken High School, but was not a high achiever. He was on his high school newspaper team and frequently secured interviews with celebrities, including Louis Armstrong. He lists some of his influences as Sid Caesar, Jack Benny, Lenny Bruce, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, as well as writers Mark Twain, Paddy Chayefsky and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Career

Television

Brooks dropped out of a public-relations program at New York University. Through his sister, who knew a secretary at CBS, he obtained a hosting job at the network's New York office — a position that typically required a college degree. For two weeks he filled in as a copywriter for CBS News and was given the job permanently when the original employee never returned. Brooks went on to become a writer for the news broadcasts, joining the Writers Guild of America and writing reports on events such as the assassination of President Kennedy. He moved to Los Angeles in 1965, to write for documentaries being produced by David L. Wolper, something he "still [hasn't] quite figured out how [he] got the guts to do," as his job at CBS was secure and well-paid. He worked as an associate producer on series such as Men in Crisis, but after six months he was laid off as the company was trying to cut back on expenses. Brooks did occasionally work for Wolper's company again, including on a National Geographic insect special.

Failing to find another job at a news agency, he met producer Allan Burns at a party. Burns got him a job on My Mother the Car where he was hired to rewrite a script after pitching some story ideas. Brooks then went on to write episodes of That Girl, The Andy Griffith Show and My Three Sons before Sheldon Leonard hired him as a story editor on My Friend Tony. In 1969 he created the series Room 222 for ABC, which lasted until 1974. Room 222 was the second series in American history to feature a black lead character, in this case high school teacher Pete Dixon played by Lloyd Haynes. The network felt the show was sensitive and so attempted to change the pilot story so that Dixon helped a white student rather than a black one, but Brooks prevented it. On the show Brooks worked with Gene Reynolds who taught him the importance of extensive and diligent research, which he conducted at Los Angeles High School for Room 222, and he used the technique on his subsequent works. Brooks left Room 222 as head writer after one year to work on other pilots and brought Burns in to produce the show. The Television Academy Foundation would point out that Room 222 "broke new narrative ground that would later be developed by the major sitcom factories of the 1970s, Grant Tinker's MTM Enterprises and Norman Lear's Tandem Productions" and also noted how the show even preceded Lear's 1970s sitcoms when it came to discussing "serious contemporary issues."

Brooks and Burns were hired by CBS programming executive Grant Tinker to create a series together with MTM Productions for Tinker's wife Mary Tyler Moore which became The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Drawing on his own background in journalism, Brooks set the show in a newsroom. Initially the show was unpopular with CBS executives who demanded Tinker fire Brooks and Burns. However the show was one of the beneficiaries of network president Fred Silverman's "rural purge"; executive Bob Wood also liked the show and moved it into a better timeslot. Brooks and Burns hired all of the show's staff themselves and eventually ended it of their own accord. The Mary Tyler Moore Show became a critical and commercial success and was the first show to feature an independent-minded, working woman, not reliant on a man, as its lead. Geoff Hammill of the Museum of Broadcast Communications described it as "one of the most acclaimed television programs ever produced" in US television history. During its seven-year period it received high praise from critics and numerous Primetime Emmy Awards, including for three years in a row Outstanding Comedy Series. In 2003 USA Today called it "one of the best shows ever to air on TV". In 1997 TV Guide selected a Mary Tyler Moore Show episode as the best TV episode ever and in 1999, Entertainment Weekly picked Mary's hat toss in the opening credits as television's second greatest moment.

Film

In 1978, Brooks began work on feature films. His first project was the 1979 film Starting Over which he wrote and co-produced with Alan J. Pakula. He adapted the screenplay from a novel by Dan Wakefield into a film The Washington Post called "a good-humored, heartening update of traditional romantic comedy" unlike the "drab" novel. The film received Oscar nominations for lead actress Jill Clayburgh and Candice Bergen for her supporting role.

Brooks' next project came in 1983, when he wrote, produced and directed Terms of Endearment, adapting the screenplay from Larry McMurtry's novel of the same name. It took Brooks four years to convince a studio to finance the film, which cost $8.5 million. Brooks won the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay, while actors Shirley MacLaine and Jack Nicholson won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor, respectively.

Brooks was fearful of the attention Oscar success would bring as he would be "deprived of a low profile", finding it "hard to work with the spotlight shining in your eyes." He added: "There's a danger of being seduced into being self-conscious, of being aware of your 'career'. That can be lethal." He also grew more concerned of the "threatening" corporate influence into the film industry at the expense of "the idea of the creative spirit". He channeled this ambivalence into Broadcast News. As a romantic comedy, Brooks felt he could say "something new...with that form", adding, "One of the things you're supposed to do every once in a while as a filmmaker is capture time and place. I was just glad there was some way to do it in a comedy." He cast William Hurt, Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks (no relation) in the three main roles.

He wished to set the film in a field he understood and opted for broadcast journalism. After talking with network journalists at the 1984 Republican National Convention, Brooks realized the field had "changed so much since I had been near it", and so "did about a year and a half of solid research" into the industry. When he began writing the screenplay, Brooks felt he "didn't like any of the three [main] characters", but decided not to change them and after two months had reversed his original opinion. Brooks stated that this also happens to the audience: "You're always supposed to arc your characters and you have this change and that's your dramatic purpose. But what I hope happens in this film is that the audience takes part in the arc. So what happens is that the movie doesn't select its own hero. It plays differently with each audience. The audience helps create the experience, depending on which character they hook onto." He did not decide on the ending of the film until the rest of it had been completed. Brooks wrote, directed, and produced Broadcast News, which was released on December 18, 1987, and received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay for Brooks. At the 38th Berlin International Film Festival, the film was nominated for the Golden Bear and Holly Hunter won the Silver Bear for Best Actress.

Return to television

Although Brooks "never meant" to return to television in the late 1980s, he was helping Tracey Ullman start The Tracey Ullman Show and when she could not find another producer, he stepped in. On the suggestion of friend and colleague Polly Platt, who gave Brooks the nine-panel Life in Hell cartoon entitled "The Los Angeles Way of Death" which hangs outside Brooks' Gracie Films office, Brooks asked Life in Hell cartoonist Matt Groening to pitch an idea for a series of animated shorts to appear on The Tracey Ullman Show. Groening initially intended to present an animated version of his Life in Hell series. However, when Groening realized that animating Life in Hell would require the rescinding of publication rights for his life's work, he chose another approach and formulated his version of a dysfunctional family in the lobby of Brooks' office. After the success of the shorts, the Fox Broadcasting Company in 1989 commissioned a series of half-hour episodes of the show, now called The Simpsons, which Brooks produced alongside Groening and Sam Simon. Brooks negotiated a provision in the contract with the Fox network that prevented Fox from interfering with the show's content. The Simpsons garnered critical and commercial acclaim, winning numerous awards including 37 Emmy Awards and two Peabody Awards as of January 2025. The Simpsons was still producing original content 35 years after it debuted in 1990. In a 1998 issue celebrating the 20th century's greatest achievements in arts and entertainment, Time magazine named The Simpsons the century's best television series. In 1997 Brooks was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.

In 1995, Brooks and Groening were involved in a public dispute over the episode "A Star Is Burns". Groening felt that the episode was a thirty-minute advertisement for Brooks' show The Critic (which had moved to Fox from ABC for its second season), which was created by former The Simpsons showrunners Al Jean and Mike Reiss, and whose lead character Jay Sherman appears in the episode. He hoped Brooks would pull the episode because "articles began to appear in several newspapers around the country saying that [Groening] created The Critic", and remove his name from the credits. In response, Brooks said "I am furious with Matt. He's been going to everybody who wears a suit at Fox and complaining about this. When he voiced his concerns about how to draw The Critic into the Simpsons' universe, he was right and we agreed to his changes. Certainly, he's allowed his opinion, but airing this publicly in the press is going too far....He is a gifted, adorable, cuddly ingrate. But his behavior right now is rotten."

The Critic was short-lived, broadcasting ten episodes on Fox before its cancellation. A total of 23 episodes were produced, and it returned briefly in 2000 with a series of ten internet broadcast webisodes. The series has since developed a cult following thanks to reruns on Comedy Central and its complete-series release on DVD. Brooks' early-1990s shows Sibs and Phenom, both produced as part of a multi-show deal with ABC, and the 2001 show What About Joan for the same network, were all similarly short-lived.

Personal life

Brooks has been married three times. His first wife was Marianne Catherine Morrissey, whom he married in 1964; they have one daughter, Amy Lorraine. They divorced in 1972. In 1978, he married Holly Beth Holmberg, and they had three children together: daughter Chloe and sons Cooper and Joseph. They divorced in 1999. As of 2025, Brooks is married to Jennifer Simchowitz, whom he married in 2024.

He is also a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. In January 2017, Brooks stated in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that his career was now just focused staying on with The Simpsons until the show ends and continuing to run into Steven Spielberg "in the market."

Brooks is an avid fan of the Los Angeles Clippers.

Filmography

Film

Acting roles

Television

Acting roles

Accolades and honours

Brooks has received eight Academy Award nominations for Terms of Endearment (1983), Broadcast News (1987), Jerry Maguire (1996), and As Good as It Gets (1997). In 1984, Brooks received three Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Terms of Endearment (1983). He has also earned 54 Primetime Emmy Awards nominations for his work on television. He has won for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, Lou Grant, The Tracey Ullman Show, and The Simpsons. On August 11, 2024, he was awarded the title of Disney Legend at the D23 Expo. Brooks received two lifetime achievement awards from the Writers Guild of America: The Laurel Award for TV Writing Achievement in 1998 and the 2018 Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement in film.

Directed Academy Award performances

Under Brooks' direction, these actors have received Academy Award wins and nominations for their performances in their respective roles.