Biography

December 12, 1936 · Atlanta, Georgia, USA

The first playwright to win the Tony, the Oscar, and the Pulitzer Prize.

Has twice won Broadway's Tony Award: in 1997 as author of Best Play winner "The Last Night of Ballyhoo" and in 1999 as Best Book (Musical) for "Parade." He had also been nominated in 1976 as Best Book (Musical) for "The Robber Bridegroom."

Won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play "Driving Miss Daisy" and was nominated for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play "The Last Night of Ballyhoo".

He was awarded the 2010 Back Stage Garland Award for Playwriting for "Parade" in a Donmar Warehouse production at the Mark Taper Forum Theatre in Los Angeles, California.

[re Driving Miss Daisy (1989)] I was very lucky because I had a director, Bruce Beresford, who had directed several plays turned into movies. He said: Let me see your draft. Then he said: You've retyped your play. He told me: You don't need to talk as much in the movies. You don't need to say, "I'll go get the car." Just show it. He said: Instead of dialogue, just give me a description of the way you remember things looked. Some of it was the way the sunlight came through blinds, or Reader's Digests stacked up on the radiator, or doing the silver polish with an old toothbrush - things I remember. I would say: Just tell the truth. And don't say it so many times.