Topic: Aaron Sorkin

Aaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an American screenwriter, producer and playwright, whose works include A Few Good Men, The American President, The West Wing, Sports Night, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and The Social Network.

After graduating from Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Musical Theatre in 1983, Sorkin spent much of the 1980s in New York as a struggling, sporadically employed actor. He found his passion in writing plays, and quickly established himself as a young promising playwright. His stage play A Few Good Men caught the attention of Hollywood producer David Brown, who bought the film rights before the play even premiered.

Castle Rock Entertainment hired Sorkin to adapt A Few Good Men for the big screen. The film, directed by Rob Reiner, became a box office success. Sorkin spent the early 1990s writing two other screenplays at Castle Rock, Malice and The American President. In the mid-1990s he worked as a script doctor on films such as Bulworth. In 1998 his television career began when he created the comedy series Sports Night for the ABC network. The second season of Sports Night was its last and in 1999 overlapped with the debut of Sorkin's next TV series, the political drama The West Wing, this time for the NBC network. The West Wing won multiple Emmy Awards, and continued for three more seasons after he left the show at the end of its fourth season in 2003. He returned to television in 2006 with the dramedy Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, about the backstage drama at a late-night sketch comedy show, once again for the NBC network. While Sorkin's return was met with high expectations and a lot of early online buzz before Studio 60's premiere, NBC did not renew it after its first season in which it suffered from low ratings and mixed reception in the press and on the Internet. His most recent feature film screenplay is The Social Network, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.