PAUL HAGGIS
(Writer/Director/Producer)

On March 5, 2006, Paul became the first person in the history of the Academy Awards to write two back-to-back Best Picture Winners, for Crash and the previous year’s winner, Million Dollar Baby.

Crash, a movie Paul co-wrote, directed and produced, was nominated for six Academy Awards, and on that evening Paul took home both Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Oscars. Just weeks prior, the cast of Crash won SAG’s highest award for Best Ensemble, and Paul and Bobby Moresco won Writers’ Guild, BAFTA and Critics’ Choice Awards for Best Original Screenplay. Paul was also nominated for the Director’s Guild Award, and the film received a number of other honors, including a Golden Globe nomination and the Grand Prize at the Deauville Film Festival. Upon its release in May 2005, Crash proved to be one of the very few independent hits of the year; with a $6.5m budget, and to date has taken in over $55m domestically.

Paul’s career in film began in 2000, after years of success in TV, when he optioned the short story and wrote the script Million Dollar Baby on spec. Once Paul’s producing partner got the script to Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby became a reality. In 2004, Eastwood shot Paul’s first draft without any changes, and less than a year after having first read the script, Million Dollar Baby was in theatres. The picture went on to gross over $100 million dollars in the U.S. and earned four Academy Awards.

Paul also wrote the screenplay for Flags of Our Fathers, the film Clint Eastwood just completed, based on the book by James Bradley with Ron Powers, and collaborated with Eastwood on Letters from Iwo Jima, which Eastwood is currently directing. Additionally, Paul recently completed writing services on Casino Royale, the latest James Bond film, set to reach theatres in November 2006.

Currently, Paul has a wide variety of projects in various stages, including Against All Enemies, from the book by Richard A Clarke for Sony Pictures, Death and Dishonor with journalist Mark Boal for Warner Brothers, and Honeymoon with Harry from the book by Bart Baker for New Line. He also has a new drama series, The Black Donnellys, set to premiere on NBC in January 2007.

Paul has created a variety of shows for television; his favorite being the critically acclaimed CBS series EZ Street.  Although the series was short-lived, it still routinely turns up on critics’ Top Ten lists.  The NY Times recently named it one of the most influential TV series of all time, saying “without EZ Streets, there would be no Sopranos.” 

In March of 2003, Razor Magazine made a list of “nonconformists that defy dictates, the iconoclasts that cling to independent thought, the radicals that refuse adherence – that give us pause.  They are what legends are made of.”  Along with Sam Shepard, Julian Schnabel, Baz Luhrmann, Lance Armstrong, Richard Branson, Robert Shapiro, John Irving and Bill Clinton, Razor named writer-director Paul Haggis as one of their “25 Mavericks” of the year.

Haggis is the recipient of many awards, including two Academy Awards, one WGA Award, one BAFTA, two Emmys, the Humanitas Prize, TV Critics Association Program of the Year Award, Viewers For Quality Television Founders Award, Banff TV Award, Columbia Mystery Writers Award, six Geminis, two Houston Worldfest Gold Awards and the Prism Award.

He also accepted the EMA Award, Genesis Award, Ethel Levitt Memorial Award for Humanitarian Service, Hollywood Award for Breakthrough Director and the WGA’s prestigious Valentine Davies Award, awarded to Paul for “bringing honor and dignity to writers everywhere.”

Haggis is co-founder of Artists for Peace and Justice, a member of the Board of Directors of The Hollywood Education and Literacy Project; For the Arts – For Every Child; the Environmental Media Association; and a founding board member of ECO, the Earth Communications Office.  He is also a member of The President’s Council of The Defenders of Wildlife, and a member of the Advisory Board of The Center for the Advancement of Non-Violence.