- Born
- Nickname
- Keevie
- The Brooklyn-born son of therapist Tev Goldsman and noted child psychologist Mira Rothenberg, screenwriter Akiva Goldsman began writing as a teenager, submitting stories to The New Yorker and other publications. Although his efforts were met with rejection, he continued an interest in creative projects, churning out stories and scripts while attending Wesleyan University and later NYU's masters program in creative writing.
His first produced script, "Silent Fall" (1994), was a fact-based screenplay about a psychologist aiding a criminal investigation in which a key witness is an autistic boy,
The film served as a calling card, giving Goldsman the opportunity to adapt John Grisham's best-seller "The Client" (1994). That film marked the start of a fruitful collaboration with director Joel Schumacher.
In 1995, Goldsman was brought on to work on the script for "Batman Forever", the third installment in the franchise which attempted to inject some levity, while many felt it was inferior to the first two Tim Burton-directed films.
The Schumacher-Goldsman continued with a second John Grisham adaptation, "A Time to Kill" (1996), and "Batman & Robin" (1997).
Goldsman next turned his attention to "Lost in Space" (1998). The movie opened well but soon fell off, grossing just over half of its estimated $126.5 million budget in the USA. That same year, Goldsman was one of three writers who adapted Alice Hoffman's novel "Practical Magic" into a starring vehicle for Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman.
After being credited as a producer on "Deep Blue Sea" (1999), Goldsman remained busy dividing his time between developing projects through his production company and accepting screenwriting jobs.
His next produced screenplay was "A Beautiful Mind" (2001), loosely based on the life of Nobel laureate John Forbes Nash Jr. who battled schizophrenia.
While the film drew some criticism for what it omitted, it also earned stellar reviews and earned Goldsman his first ever accolades, including a Golden Globe, a Writers Guild of America Award as well as an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
- IMDb mini biography by: P.H. Noris
- ChildrenLily GoldsmanEver Goldsman
- ParentsMira RothenbergTev Goldsman
- Spent years writing short fiction without any success, sending dozens of stories through the mail to publishers, only to receive rejection letters in return. At age 28, he decided to take Robert McKee's story structure course, which led him to write his first screenplay. The very first feature film script he wrote, was a script called "Indian Summer". After years of failure as a short fiction writer, Goldsman managed to break through as a screenwriter on the first time out. His script for "Indian Summer" would land him an agent in Hollywood, and would eventually sell to Morgan Creek in January 1991, for $325,000. The script would get produced under the new title Silent Fall (1994).
- According to Celebrity Net Worth, Akiva Goldsman has an estimated net worth of roughly $50 million, as of 2017.
- Akiva Goldsman has been one of the most successful screenwriters in Hollywood history. Since breaking into the business in 1991, Akiva has been a highly in demand script doctor. Among his many uncredited rewrites and production polishes over the years, they include: The Specialist (1994), Deep Blue Sea (1999), Charlie's Angels (2000), The Sum of All Fears (2002), The Recruit (2003), The Rundown (2003), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), The Missing (2003), The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), Constantine (2005), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), Poseidon (2006), Hancock (2008) and Jonah Hex (2010) among others.
- Raised in Brooklyn Heights, New York, Akiva Goldsman received his bachelor's degree from Wesleyan University and attended the graduate fiction writing program at New York University.
- Fairy tales don't feel like fairy tales to the people that live them. Cinderella herself was having a pretty terrible time.
- The more you work with someone, the better you work together. There is nothing more difficult than learning to work with another person. And nothing more gratifying. So why would you want to abandon that? [on constantly working with Ron Howard and Russell Crowe]
- Angels & Demons (2009) - $4,000,000
- Charlie's Angels (2000) - $300,000 ($100,000 per week for 3-weeks of work as a script doctor)
- Silent Fall (1994) - $325,000
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content
