Stephen Gaghan ( GAY-gən; born May 6, 1965) is an American screenwriter and director. He is noted for writing the screenplay for Steven Soderbergh's film Traffic, based on a Channel 4 series, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, as well as Syriana which he wrote and directed. He wrote and directed the thriller Abandon and Dolittle, a family film, in addition to directing the drama Gold.
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Early life and education
Gaghan was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of the former Elizabeth Jane Whorton and her first husband, Stephen Gaghan (d. 1980), and a stepson of Tom Haag. He is a grandson of Jerry Gaghan, a newspaper columnist and drama critic for Variety and the Philadelphia Daily News. He wrote in a 2001 article in Newsweek, "I also wanted to be a writer, like my grandfather, who carried a card in his wallet that read, "If you find me, call my son [my father] at this number."
In his final days of high school before graduation, Gaghan was expelled for driving a go-kart through the halls of the school. During the release of Traffic, a critic commented on one of the teen characters in the movie who is a drug addict and a straight-A student, calling it unrealistic, which Gaghan defended, saying that he had straight A's while he was addicted to drugs and alcohol. As Gaghan wrote in an article published in Newsweek in February 2001, "I wasn't much different from my peers, except where they could stop drinking after three or six or 10 drinks, I couldn't stop and wouldn't stop until I had progressed through marijuana, cocaine, heroin and, finally, crack and freebase--which seem for so many people to be the last stop on the elevator." Gaghan said that he began dealing with his addictions in 1997. "Over one long, five-day weekend, I had three separate heroin dealers get arrested," he said. "My dealer, my backup dealer and my backup-backup dealer. I was left alone, and I just hit that place, that total incomprehensible demoralization. That was the end of it; up five days straight, locked in the bathroom, convinced there was nowhere else to go, I had to kill myself, I'm going to kill myself. I just couldn't take another minute of it."
He attended the University of Kentucky in Lexington and was a member of Delta Tau Delta fraternity. He was a student on the fall 1986 voyage of the Semester at Sea study abroad program, attending classes on board the SS Universe and sailed around the world. He eventually graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts in 1988 with a degree in screenwriting. He began a catalog company, Fallen Empire Inc., which he hoped would support his writing career.
Career
Gaghan wrote the screenplay for Traffic, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2000. In addition to Traffic, Gaghan also directed and wrote the screenplays for Syriana (2005) and Abandon (2002); the former receiving comparable critical acclaim to Traffic, while the latter received negative reviews. Other writing credits include Rules of Engagement (2000), Havoc (2005), and The Alamo (2004), as well as a handful of episodes of various television series. Gaghan turned down the chance to adapt Dan Brown's novel, The Da Vinci Code. In television writing, he won an Emmy Award for co-writing a NYPD Blue episode entitled Where's Swaldo, in 1997. In addition to NYPD Blue, he has also written for The Practice and New York Undercover.
He was slated to direct a film adaptation of Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Gaghan has been hired by Warner Bros. to write the screenplay of the Dead Spy Running franchise written by author Jon Stock. Gaghan is also set to direct crime thriller Candy Store. On January 19, 2017, it was announced that Ubisoft had hired him to direct the film adaptation of the popular video game The Division, but it was announced later that Gaghan was no longer attached to the project.
Personal life
Gaghan has a son, Gardner (b. 1999) and a daughter, Elizabeth, who goes by the nickname of Betsy (b. 2001), from a previous relationship with actress Michael McCraine. He met McCraine in 1997 while at a recovery meeting. On May 19, 2007, Gaghan and Marion "Minnie" Mortimer married; they have a daughter born in 2009 and a son born in 2014. Gaghan and Mortimer (the great-granddaughter of Henry Morgan Tilford and from a well-to-do family) met at a pre-Oscars picnic after Gaghan watched her from a distance for two hours.
Filmography
Film
Uncredited revisions
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)
Black Hawk Down (2001)
Phone Booth (2002)
After Earth (2013)
Video games
Call of Duty: Ghosts (2013)
Personal appearances
Entourage
The Henry Rollins Show
Film '72
Sunday Morning Shootout
The Charlie Rose Show
The Big Story
HBO First Look
Hollywood High (2003)
73rd Academy Awards
Inside Traffic: The Making of Traffic
