Aaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an
American screenwriter,
producer and
playwright. After graduating from
Syracuse University with a
Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in
Musical Theatre in 1983, Sorkin spent much of the 1980s in New York as a struggling, largely unemployed actor.
["In the Spotlight: Script Sensation", Brad Herzog, Syracuse University Magazine, Summer 2001. Retrieved on May 9, 2007.] He found his passion in writing plays, and quickly established himself as a young promising playwright. His stageplay
A Few Good Men caught the attention of Hollywood producer
David Brown, who bought the film rights before the play even premiered.
Castle Rock Entertainment hired Sorkin to adapt A Few Good Men for the big screen. The movie, directed by Rob Reiner, became a box office success. Sorkin spent the early 1990s writing two other screenplays at Castle Rock for the films Malice and The American President. In the mid-1990s he worked as a script doctor on films such as Schindler's List and Bulworth. In 1998 his television career began when he created the TV comedy series Sports Night for the ABC network. Sports Nights second season was its last, and in 1999 overlapped with the debut of Sorkin's next TV series, the multiple-Emmy-award-winning political drama The West Wing, this time for the NBC network. He left The West Wing at the end of its fourth season in 2003, after which it continued three more seasons without him. He returned to television in 2006 with the dramedy Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, about the backstage drama at a late night sketch comedy show, once again for the NBC network. While Sorkin's return was met with high expectations and a lot of early online buzz before Studio 60's premiere, NBC did not renew it after its first season in which it suffered from low ratings and mixed reception in the press and on the Internet. His most recent feature film screenplay is Charlie Wilson's War.
After more than a decade away from the theatre, Sorkin returned to adapt for the stage his screenplay The Farnsworth Invention, which started a workshop run at La Jolla Playhouse in February 2007 and which opened on Broadway in December 2007.
