David Mamet
Born: 30th November 1947
Where: Chicago, Illinois
The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, novelist, poet and two-time Oscar nominee deals with the venal nature of American society in his films.
Probably best known for penning Glengarry Glen Ross, which dealt with crooked estate agents, Mamet focused on the seamy side of life.
He also lifted the lid on sexual politics in the controversial Oleanna and government chicanery in Spartan.
Mamet studied English at college in Vermont (where he met regular collaborator William H Macy) and then returned to Chicago.
Taking on a variety of low-paid jobs including cab driver, window cleaner and real estate salesman, he rubbed shoulders with the city's lowlife.
A failed actor, he began his own theatre group - the St Nicholas Theatre Company -aged 24 and wrote American Buffalo, which transferred to Broadway.
He made his film debut with his first produced screenplay The Postman Always Rings Twice, adapted from the novel by James M Cain.
Despite his love for films, Mamet also continued to write regularly for the stage, winning awards for Edmond and The Cryptogram.
His script for Sidney Lumet's The Verdict starring Paul Newman, earned him an Academy Award nomination.
In 1985 he founded the Atlantic Theatre Company with William H Macy, as a summer workshop in Vermont for his NYU students.
He scripted Brian De Palma's Oscar-winning The Untouchables, and made his directorial debut helming his own script House of Games.
He followed this with the gentle Mafia fable Things Change, co-written with Shel Silverstein, and starring Joe Mantegna and Don Ameche.
Next came Homicide, which opened the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Glengarry Glen Ross was made into an acclaimed film starring Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon.
Oleanna, his study of sexual harassment starring Macy, The Spanish Prisoner, a Hitchcockian thriller, followed.
In 1997 his scripts powered two major releases - Lee Tamahori's adventure thriller The Edge, with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin, and Barry Levinson's star-studded Wag the Dog.
The Winslow Boy, an adaptation of Terrence Rattigan's play about the British class system, starred Jeremy Northam and Rebecca Pidgeon.
Mamet, a staunch anglophile, married the British actress and cites English writer Harold Pinter as his hero.
In 1997 his scripts powered two major releases - Lee Tamahori's adventure thriller The Edge, with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin, and Barry Levinson's star-studded Wag the Dog.
In 2000, State and Main looked at the effects of a film crew on a small New England town while the short Catastrophe starred Sir John Gielgud.
Heist displayed Mamet's gift for the thriller genre in a switch-backing robbery caper starring Gene Hackman and Danny DeVito.
Recent work includes the political thriller Spartan about the kidnap of the president's daughter and drawing on Val Kilmer's best performance in an age.
In addition to his stage and film work, he has published a number of books, including several volumes of essays, two novels and a book of poems.
