Charlie Kaufman

Charlie Kaufman (born November 1958) is an American screenwriter, director, and novelist celebrated for his surreal, meta-fictional works that delve into themes of identity, memory, consciousness, and existential dread. Born in New York to engineer Myron Kaufman and homemaker Helen Kaufman, he spent his early years in Massapequa, New York, before the family relocated to West Hartford, Connecticut, where he graduated high school in 1976 after excelling in drama. An avid reader and aspiring filmmaker from a young age, Kaufman created short Super-8 movies as a teenager and briefly attended Boston University before transferring to New York University to study film, though he did not complete his degree.

After early jobs as a copyboy at the Minneapolis Star Tribune and in the education department of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Kaufman broke into television writing in the 1990s, contributing to cult series such as Get a Life! (1990–1992) and Ned and Stacey (1996–1997). His transition to feature films marked a meteoric rise, beginning with the screenplay for Being John Malkovich (1999), directed by Spike Jonze, which garnered him an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 72nd Oscars. This was followed by Human Nature (2001) and the self-referential Adaptation (2002), also directed by Jonze, earning another Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Kaufman's crowning achievement in screenwriting came with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), directed by Michel Gondry, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay at the 77th Oscars, sharing story credit with Gondry and Pierre Bismuth.

Charlie Kaufman was born Charles Stuart Kaufman on November 19, 1958, in New York City to a Jewish family of middle-class means. His parents were Myron Kaufman, an engineer, and Helen Kaufman, a homemaker. He had one older sister, and the family maintained a typical suburban Jewish upbringing reminiscent of Levittown's post-war communities.