David Mamet

Born in Chicago, David Mamet grew up in a largely Jewish neighborhood and attended a progressive independent school in the city’s affluent Lincoln Park neighborhood before matriculating to a low-residency college in Vermont. After school, Mamet worked odd jobs while he chased his dream of becoming an actor—but when few roles materialized, Mamet decided to write and stage his own plays while teaching and directing in Chicago, Vermont, and New York. In the mid-1970s, Mamet began achieving success as a playwright, and he won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his famed play Glengarry Glen Ross. Mamet went on to form the prestigious Atlantic Theater Company in New York in 1985 alongside William H. Macy. In the 1980s, Mamet continued to achieve success as a playwright while moving into screenwriting and film directing, adapting his own plays Glengarry Glen Ross and Oleanna for the screen and receiving acclaim and award nominations for his adapted screenplays of The Postman Always Rings Twice and The Verdict. A controversial but pivotal figure in American theater, Mamet is known for his cynical, clipped, and often even vicious dialogue, which critics have termed “Mamet-speak,” and for his controversial perspectives on gender roles, political correctness, and world politics.