- Born
- Birth nameCharles Stewart Kaufman
- Height5′ 4½″ (1.64 m)
- Avid reader Charlie Kaufman wrote plays and made short films as a young student. He moved from Massapequa, New York to West Hartford, Connecticut in 1972 where he attended high school. As a comedic actor, he performed in school plays and, after graduation, he enrolled at Boston University but soon transferred NYU to study film. Charlie worked in the circulation department of the Star Tribune, in Minneapolis, in the late 1980s and moved to Los Angeles in 1991, where he was hired to write for the TV sitcom Get a Life (1990). He went on to write comedy sketches and a variety of TV show episodes. Between writing assignments, he wrote the inventive screenplay Being John Malkovich (1999), which created Hollywood interest and the attention of producer Steve Golin. Charlie works at home in Pasadena, California, where he lives with his wife Denise and children.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Judy Couzens
- SpouseDenise(? - present) (1 child)
- ParentsHelen KaufmanMyron Kaufman
- Scripts usually feature reluctant protagonists who start out in the story as downtrodden or self-doubtful, frustrated with life or love or their professions.
- Stories with bizarre plots that showcase a sense of fantasy in the real world.
- His films often deal with themes of reality and identity
- On February 11, 2003, Charlie Kaufman was nominated for a Academy Award, along with his fictional twin brother Donald Kaufman, for the screenplay of Adaptation (2002). This is one of the few times in Oscar history that a nomination has been bestowed upon a fictional human being.
- Worked alongside Stephen Colbert and Louis C.K. on the writing staff of The Dana Carvey Show (1996).
- 3 of the 5 movies he has penned so far are based around real people in fictional situations: Susan Orlean, John Laroche and himself in Adaptation. (2002), Chuck Barris in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich (1999) (obviously).
- Did uncredited rewrite of Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011).
- Wrote an unproduced draft of A Scanner Darkly (2006).
- I don't know what the hell a third act is.
- [In 2020 print interview] No one writes more incisively on Hollywood than Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin's minister of culture. His book "The Zionism, Ebionism, and Pie in the Sky-onism of Hollywood Under Jewish Businessmen Goldwyn, Zanuck, and Fox" is a refreshingly chatty yet eye-opening read. Sweet Tooth Pam tweeted about it last week, and I read all 543 pages on my Kindle in a single sitting.
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