Lawrence Kasdan Biography
Summary
"Lawrence Kasdan" (born 14 January, 1949) is an American movie producer, director and screenwriter. Raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, where he graduated from Morgantown High School in 1966, he went on to attend the University of Michigan as an education major.
Kasdan was born in Miami, Florida. He graduated from the University of Michigan with an MA in Education, originally planning on a career as an English teacher. He was a student of Professor Kenneth Thorpe Rowe. Upon graduation, Kasdan was unable to find a teaching position, so he became an advertising copywriter, a profession he found so loathsome he refused to bring a second child into the world until he escaped it. Still, he labored at it for five years (even picking up a Clio Award along the way), first in Detroit and later in Los Angeles where he tried to interest Hollywood in his screenplays.
Kasdan's introduction into the film business came in the mid-1970s when he sold his script for "The Bodyguard" to Warner Bros. as a vehicle for Diana Ross. The script became stuck in 'development hell' and became one of several scripts successively called 'the best un-made film in Hollywood'; it was eventually produced as a 1992 film starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner.
George Lucas commissioned Kasdan in 1979 to complete the screenplay for "The Empire Strikes Back" after the death of Leigh Brackett. Lucas then commissioned Kasdan to write the screenplay for "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and the last installment of the Star Wars trilogy, "Return of the Jedi". Kasdan made his directing debut in 1981 with "Body Heat", which he also wrote.
Kasdan is known for both writing and directing his films, which have ranged from Westerns to romantic comedies to, most prominently, thought-provoking dramas. He has received four Academy Award nominations, for screenplays to "The Big Chill", "Grand Canyon", and "The Accidental Tourist", for which he also earned a nomination for Best Picture. He has cast Kevin Kline in five of his films.
He makes a cameo appearance in James L. Brooks' comedy "As Good As It Gets" as the fed-up psychiatrist of Jack Nicholson's novelist.
Kasdan is the father of directors/actors Jake and Jon Kasdan.
Credit
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article about Lawrence Kasdan.
