Charlie Kaufman

Charles Stuart "Charlie" Kaufman (New York City, November 19, 1958) is an American screenwriter, film director, producer, lyricist and playwright. Known for writing distinctly original and complex screenplays, he has become a respected voice in Hollywood thanks to movies such as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York, the last of which was also his directorial debut.

Many of the films penned by Kaufman have been critically acclaimed, notably Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which earned him his only Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2005. Kaufman has been nominated two other times for the award, for his work in Being John Malkovich and Adaptation., and is also a three-time BAFTA Award winner for his writing, a winner of the Critics' Choice Award for Best Writer, and a three-time Golden Globe Award nominee for Best Screenplay.

Kaufman's screenplays are known for exploring themes such as death, identity crisis, the creative process and the functioning of the human mind while employing metalinguistic or multi-layered story structures that often reinforce psychological motifs. His work is described by some as "cerebral" and "postmodern" and he is widely regarded as one of the most inventive screenwriters working today. Film critic Roger Ebert has described Kaufman as "one of the few truly important writers to make screenplays his medium."