Aaron Sorkin

Aaron Sorkin

Aaron Benjamin Sorkin is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and playwright. His works include the Broadway plays A Few Good Men, The Farnsworth Invention and To Kill a Mockingbird. For writing The Social Network, he won an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay. He made his feature film debut as a director in 2017 with the crime drama Molly’s Game.

About Aaron Sorkin in brief

Summary Aaron SorkinAaron Benjamin Sorkin is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and playwright. His works include the Broadway plays A Few Good Men, The Farnsworth Invention and To Kill a Mockingbird. For writing 2010’s The Social Network, he won an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay. He made his feature film debut as a director in 2017 with the crime drama Molly’s Game, which garnered mostly positive reviews. He is recognized for his trademark fast-paced dialogue and extended monologues, complemented by frequent collaborator Thomas Schlamme’s storytelling technique called the ‘walk and talk’. He was born in Manhattan, New York City, to a Jewish family, and was raised in the New York suburb of Scarsdale. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father a copyright lawyer who had fought in WWII and put himself through college on the G. I. Bill. His paternal grandfather was one of the founders of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. He took an early interest in acting, and served as vice president of the drama club in his junior and senior years, and graduated in 1979. In 1984, he staged his first play, Removing All Doubt, which he sent to his former theatre teacher, Arthur Storch, for drama students at alma mater, Syracuse University. After that, he wrote Hidden in This Picture which debuted at Steve Olsen’s West Bank Cafe in New York in 1988.

The quality of his first two plays earned him a theatrical agent, John McQuiggan, who commissioned him to turn one-length play into a full-length film called Making Movies. His sister Deborah graduated from Boston University with his next play, a courtroom drama called A Few Bad Men, which was inspired by a phone conversation with his sister, Deborah. He wrote the film screenplay for the legal drama The American President, and several biopics including Charlie Wilson’s War, Moneyball, and Steve Jobs. He has also written the television series Sports Night, The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and The Newsroom. He lives with his wife and two children in New Jersey. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children, a son, and a daughter. They have a son and a step-daughter, both of whom were born in the 1990s. They are expecting their first grandchild, a daughter, who is due to be born in April 2015. Sorksin is married to his long-time friend, actor and director David Arquibay, and has three children of whom he is best known as a producer, writer, and director of Sports Night, West Wing, and The New Wing. He also has two step-children, who are currently living in Los Angeles and New York, and one step-son, who lives in San Francisco. He currently has a daughter and a son-in-law who are both in their early 20s.