The son of blacklisted screenwriter Arthur Ross, creator of Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954), Gary Ross was born in Los Angeles in 1956 and received an Ivy League education at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught a course on Film and Social History. However, intending to gain real-life experience, Ross dropped out before graduation to work on a fishing boat. He also studied acting under the legendary Stella Adler, but his attention ultimately turned to filmmaking and writing.
Initially, Ross concentrated on writing novels. His first was not a financial success. After spending his advance for a second novel without completing it, Ross appeared as a contestant on the TV game show Tic Tac Dough and won $50,000, enabling him to live while he completed the project.
His brief career as a novelist led Ross to Paramount Pictures, where he was hired to write a treatment and made the acquaintance of producer Leonard Goldberg, who hired him to pen a script. That screenplay and two others were never produced.
Ross' fourth screenplay would end up earning Oscar and Writer's Guild nominations. He wrote the script for the blockbuster hit Big (1988) with a neighbor, Anne Spielberg, sister of director Steven Spielberg. The film's success transformed Ross into an A-list screenwriter.…  » Read more