Aaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an American playwright, screenwriter, actor, television writer, television producer, and film director. Born in New York City, Sorkin developed a passion for writing at an early age. His works include the Broadway plays A Few Good Men, The Farnsworth Invention, and To Kill a Mockingbird, as well as the television series Sports Night (1998–2000), The West Wing (1999–2006), Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006–07), and The Newsroom (2012–14). He wrote the film screenplay for the legal drama A Few Good Men (1992), the comedy The American President (1995), and several biopics including Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Moneyball (2011), and Steve Jobs (2015). For writing 2010's The Social Network, he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay.
He made his feature film debut as a director in 2017 with the crime drama Molly's Game, which garnered mostly positive reviews and earned him a third Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Sorkin's follow up directorial film was the historical legal drama The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) which earned 6 Academy Award nominations including Best Original Screenplay. As a writer, Sorkin is recognized for his trademark fast-paced dialogue and extended monologues, complemented by frequent collaborator Thomas Schlamme's storytelling technique called the "walk and talk". These sequences consist of single tracking shots of long duration involving multiple characters engaging in conversation as they move through the set; characters enter and exit the conversation as the shot continues without any cuts.
Last Updated: June 9, 2021
