Trivia

Won both his Oscar and a Razzie award the same weekend in 1998: He took Best Screenplay for L.A. Confidential (1997) and Worst Screenplay for Kevin Costner's The Postman (1997). When asked backstage at The Academy Awards about winning both "honors," Helgeland declared he'd like to display them both side-by-side on his mantle to remind him of the Quixotic nature of Hollywood. He then made good on his promise, permitting the founders of The Razzies to present him his Worst Screenplay dis-honor in his production offices as Warner Bros. studios later that year. He was only the fourth person in Razzie history to voluntarily accept one of their statuettes.

Was a fisherman in New Bedford, MA, as a short career until he decided to drive cross country to Hollywood.

In 1990 he wrote a script called The Ticking Man with Manny Coto which was sold the same year to Largo Entertainment for $1.2m. The plot was about a machine made to look human with a nuclear warhead in its chest. When the script was being auctioned, it was sent to the studios with a ticking alarm clock attached. The film has never been produced.

Mother is from Norway. Father is from Brooklyn.

Graduated from Loyola Marymount University, in Los Angeles.

The November 14, 2003, draft of the screenplay for The Bourne Supremacy (2004) credits Brian Helgeland for a rewrite. He is not credited in the final film.

His directing mentor was Richard Donner when they worked together on Conspiracy Theory (1997) and then when Brian started to direct Payback (1999).

He received his undergraduate degree at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Father of Martin Helgeland & Ian Helgeland.