Biography

Leigh Douglass Brackett was born in 1915 in Los Angeles. She was the author of numerous short stories and books regarding science fiction and has been referred to as the Queen of Space Opera. Hollywood director Howard Hawks was so impressed by one of her novels that he had his secretary call in "this guy Brackett" to help William Faulkner write the script for The Big Sleep (1946). As a screenwriter, she is best known for her work in The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo (1959), and Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980). She died of cancer in 1978 in Lancaster, California.
- IMDb mini biography by: J Cravens

The character "Sheriff Leigh Brackett" in John Carpenter's successful independent horror film Halloween (1978) was named after her.

A noted science-fiction/fantasy author who was prolific in SF and other pulps in the 1940s; a mentor and sometime collaborator of Ray Bradbury.

Died of cancer after writing the first version of the script of Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Because it was an unfinished script, George Lucas revised her draft and engaged Lawrence Kasdan to finish the screenplay. It is unclear how many of her original ideas made it into the final script (the "Wampa" was called an "ice creature", the Tauntauns were "snow lizards", and Yoda was named Buffy), but Lucas gave her credit on the screenplay, while he himself is uncredited for his work on the screenplay itself and only is credited as writing the story of Empire.

Because her first name was not obviously feminine, her fans thought that she was a man in the early 1940s.

Howard Hawks thought Leigh Brackett was a good writer because according to him she wrote "like a man".

They were all collaborations. The filmmaking process is a team effort. A screenwriter cannot possibly do exactly what he wants, as if he was writing a novel. When I write a novel I am God at my own typewriter and there is nobody in between. But when I write a screenplay it must be a compromise because there are so many elements which are outside the writer's province.

"I simply enjoy the work. Of course, Hollywood has changed greatly since I first started writing. Now you must grab what you can get. I even wrote a TV script for 'The Rockford Files.' Screenwriting is still a challenge for me. It's more technical than creative. You have to be a very good journeyman plumber and put the proper parts together. Then, if you can still inject a little bit of something worthwhile, you have done as much as can be expected." (from a 1974 interview)

Writing a film is like building a brick wall. You have a plan and you have the blocks. Then, somebody says, 'I think we'll take this stone out of here and put it over there. And while we're at it, let's make this stone red and that stone green.' You still have to keep the story's general shape, but you change the details. It took me a long time, but I finally learned how to do that. It was exhausting.

[on Elliott Gould's performance in "The Long Goodbye" (1973)]: I thought he did a beautiful job. However, the thing about Elliott is that he isn't tough. His face is gentle, his eyes are kind and he doesn't have that touch of cruelty that you associate with these characters.