Akiva Goldsman

Akiva Goldsman
Akiva Goldsman at the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles, May 2011
Born	(1962-07-07) July 7, 1962 (age 49) New York City, New York, United States
Occupation	Director, producer, writer
Spouse	Rebecca Spikings (?-2010)

Akiva J. Goldsman (born July 7, 1962) from Walker Valley, New York is an American film and television writer, director, and producer.

He received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the 2001 film, A Beautiful Mind, which also won the Oscar for Best Picture.

Goldsman has been involved specifically with Hollywood films. His filmography includes the films A Beautiful Mind, I Am Legend and Cinderella Man, as well as more serious dramas, and numerous rewrites both credited and uncredited. In 2006 Goldsman re-teamed with A Beautiful Mind director Ron Howard for a high profile project, adapting Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code for Howard's much-anticipated film version, receiving mixed reviews for his work.

Goldsman currently serves as a writer, director, and consulting producer on the FOX science-fiction/horror series Fringe.

Life and career

Akiva Goldsman was born in New York City on July 7, 1962 to Tev Goldsman, a therapist, and Mira Rothenberg, a child psychologist.^[1] Both parents ran a group home for emotionally disturbed children. Goldsman's parents were occupied with their work, and Goldsman said, "By the time I was 10 or 12, I realized they had taken my parents away from me. I wanted nothing more to do with that world. I wanted to be a writer. I had a fantasy that someday I'd see my name on a book." In 1983, Goldsman attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.^[2] After graduation, Goldsman studied creative writing at New York University. He began writing screenplays, and in 1994, he wrote the screenplay that would become the film Silent Fall.^[1] Afterward, director Joel Schumacher hired Goldsman to write The Client.^[2]

In the late 1990s, Akiva Goldsman wrote screenplays for A Time to Kill and Batman & Robin, which were considered subpar quality and got him nominated for the Golden Raspberry Awards. Goldsman came to the realization, "I sort of got lost. I was writing away from what I knew. It's a little like a cat chasing its tail. Once you start making movies that are less than satisfying, you start to lose your opportunity to make the satisfying ones. People are not serving them up to you, saying, 'You're the guy we want for this.'" Goldsman appealed to producer Brian Grazer to write the screenplay for A Beautiful Mind and ultimately won an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay. The star of A Beautiful Mind, Russell Crowe, later invited Goldsman and director Ron Howard to film Cinderella Man, and Goldsman wrote the film's screenplay.^[3]

In 2009, he signed on to co-produce the Warner Bros. film adaptation of the British television series Primeval.^[4]

On April 6, 2010, it was announced that he will produce a PG-13 remake of the Troma cult film The Toxic Avenger.^[5]

On September 8, 2010, it was announced that he will write the first season of the television series based on the novels of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. The project is currently in "development hell".^[6]

Fringe

In 2008, Goldsman joined the first season crew of the FOX horror/mystery series Fringe, as writer, director, and consulting producer. The first episode Goldsman directed and wrote was "Bad Dreams", for which he was critically lauded. Now in its fourth season, Goldsman continues to work on the show.^[7][8] Episodes he has contributed to include:

• "Bad Dreams" (01.17)
• "The Road Not Taken" (01.19) (executive producer Jeff Pinkner and supervising producer J.R. Orci co-wrote a teleplay, based on a story Goldsman imagined)
• "There's More Than One of Everything" (01.20) (co-executive producer J.H. Wyman and Pinkner co-wrote a teleplay, based on a story Goldsman and executive producer Bryan Burk imagined)
• "A New Day in the Old Town" (02.01) (co-written by co-creator J.J. Abrams)
• "Peter" (02.16) (co-showrunners Jeff Pinkner, J.H. Wyman, and supervising producer Josh Singer co-wrote a teleplay, based on a story Pinkner, Goldsman, Singer, and Wyman imagined)
• "Brown Betty" (02.20) (co-written by Wyman and Pinkner)
• "Over There (Part 1)" (02.22) (co-written with Pinkner and Wyman)
• "Over There (Part 2)" (02.23) (co-written by Pinkner and Wyman)
• "Subject 13" (03.15) (co-written with Wyman and Pinkner)
• "Stowaway" (03.17) (Danielle Dispaltro wrote a teleplay, based on a story Pinkner, Goldsman, and Wyman imagined)
• "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide" (03.19) (Wyman and Pinkner co-wrote a teleplay, based on a story Wyman, Goldsman, and Pinkner imagined)
• "The Day We Died" (03.22) (Pinkner and Wyman co-wrote a teleplay, based on a story Goldsman, Pinkner, and Wyman imagined)
• "Neither Here Nor There" (04.01) (Wyman and Pinkner co-wrote a teleplay, based on a story Wyman, Goldsman, and Pinkner imagined)
• "Subject 9" (04.04) (co-written by Wyman and Pinkner)
• "Making Angels" (04.11) (co-written with Wyman and Pinkner)
• "Nothing as It Seems" (04.16) (co-written with Pinkner)
• "Letters of Transit" (04.19) (co-written by Wyman and Pinkner)
• "Brave New World (Part 1)" (04.21) (co-written by Wyman and Pinkner)
• "Brave New World (Part 2)" (04.22) (co-written with Wyman and Pinkner)

Personal life

Goldsman's second wife, film producer Rebecca Spikings-Goldsman, died of a heart attack on July 6, 2010, at the age of 42.^[9]

Filmography

Further reading

• Thane, Christopher (November 1999). "Swimming with sharks". Fade In (Fade In Publishing Group Inc) 5 (3): 17. 
• Divine, Christian (January 2002). "Peace of mind". Creative Screenwriting (Inside Information Group, Ltd) 9 (1): 69, 71–74. 
• Fleming, Michael (June 2006). "Good as Goldsman". Fade In (Fade In Publishing Group Inc) 9 (2): [50]–52. 

References

External links

• Akiva Goldsman at the Internet Movie Database