Background and career
Aaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an American screenwriter, playwright, and filmmaker. As a writer for stage, television, and film, he is recognized for his fast-paced dialogue and extended monologues, complemented by frequent use of the storytelling technique called the "walk and talk". Sorkin has earned numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, five Primetime Emmy Awards, three Golden Globes, and two WGA Awards, in addition to a Laurence Olivier Award nomination. Born in New York City, Sorkin developed a passion for writing at an early age. He rose to prominence as a writer-creator and showrunner of the television series Sports Night (1998–2000), The West Wing (1999–2006), Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006–2007), and The Newsroom (2012–2014). He is also known for his work on Broadway, including the plays A Few Good Men (1989), The Farnsworth Invention (2007), To Kill a Mockingbird (2018), and the revival of Lerner and Loewe's musical Camelot (2023). He wrote the film screenplays for A Few Good Men (1992), The American President (1995), and several biopics, including Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Moneyball (2011), and Steve Jobs (2015). For writing The Social Network (2010), he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He made his directorial film debut with Molly's Game (2017), followed by The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), Being the Ricardos (2021), and The Social Reckoning (2026), which served as a standalone sequel to The Social Network.
Sorkin was born in Manhattan, New York City, to a Jewish family, on June 9, 1961. He was raised in the New York suburb of Scarsdale. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father a copyright lawyer who had fought in World War II and went to college on the G.I. Bill; both his older sister and brother went on to become lawyers. His paternal grandfather was one of the founders of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). His older brother, Daniel, died at birth and Aaron has referred to himself as the "understudy." For his bar mitzvah, Sorkin asked his rabbi to record the Hebrew passage rather than follow the usual Torah-study preparation, and learned it by ear; he later cited the episode as an early example of his ear for language. Sorkin took an early interest in acting. During childhood, his parents took him to the theatre to see shows such as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and That Championship Season. In the eighth grade, he played General Bullmoose in the musical Li'l Abner. He attended Scarsdale High School where he became involved in the drama and theatre club. At Scarsdale High, he served as vice president of the drama club in his junior and senior years, and graduated in 1979. In 1979, Sorkin attended Syracuse University. In his freshman year, he failed a class that was a core requirement, which caused a setback because he wanted to be an actor, and the drama department did not allow students to take the stage until they completed the core classes. Determined to do better, he returned for his sophomore year, and graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in musical theatre. Recalling the influence of theatre teacher Arthur Storch, Sorkin said: "Arthur's reputation as a director, and as a disciple of Lee Strasberg, was a big reason why a lot of us went to S.U. [Syracuse University]... 'You have the capacity to be so much better than you are', he started saying to me in September of my senior year. He was still saying it in May. On the last day of classes, he said it again, and I said, 'How?', and he answered, 'Dare to fail'. I've been coming through on his admonition ever since".
Sorkin moved to New York City where he spent much of the 1980s as a struggling, sporadically employed actor who worked odd jobs, such as delivering singing telegrams, driving a limousine, touring Alabama with the children's theatre company Traveling Playhouse, handing out flyers promoting a hunting-and-fishing show, and bartending at Broadway's Palace Theatre. One weekend, while house-sitting for a friend, he found a typewriter, started typing, and "felt a phenomenal confidence and a kind of joy that [he] had never experienced before in [his] life". He continued writing and eventually put together his first play, Removing All Doubt, which he sent to Arthur Storch, his former theatre teacher, who was impressed. In 1984, Removing All Doubt was staged for drama students at Sorkin's alma mater, Syracuse University. After that, he wrote Hidden in This Picture which debuted Off-Off-Broadway at Steve Olsen's West Bank Cafe Downstairs Theatre Bar in 1988. The quality of his first two plays earned him a theatrical agent. Producer John A. McQuiggan saw the production of Hidden in This Picture and commissioned Sorkin to turn the one-act into a full-length play called Making Movies. Sorkin was inspired to write his next play, a courtroom drama called A Few Good Men, from a phone conversation with his sister Deborah, who had graduated from Boston University Law School and signed up for a three-year stint with the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps. Deborah told Sorkin that she was going to Guantanamo Bay to defend a group of Marines who came close to killing a fellow Marine in a hazing ordered by a superior officer. Sorkin took that information and wrote much of his story on cocktail napkins while bartending at the Palace Theatre. When he returned home, he would transcribe the story and notes onto the computer, forming a basis from which he wrote many drafts for A Few Good Men. In 1988, Sorkin sold the film rights for A Few Good Men to producer David Brown before it premiered, in a deal that was reportedly "well into six figures". Brown had read an article in The New York Times about Sorkin's one-act play Hidden in This Picture, and found out Sorkin had a play that was having Off Broadway readings. Brown produced A Few Good Men on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre. It starred Tom Hulce and was directed by Don Scardino. After opening in late 1989, it ran for 497 performances. Sorkin continued writing Making Movies and in 1990 it debuted Off-Broadway at the Promenade Theatre, produced by John McQuiggan, and directed by Don Scardino. Meanwhile, Brown was producing for TriStar Pictures, and tried to interest them in adapting A Few Good Men into a film, but his proposal was declined due to the lack of star actor involvement. Brown later received a phone call from Alan Horn at Castle Rock Entertainment who was eager to make the film. Rob Reiner, a Castle Rock producing partner, opted to direct.
Sorkin worked under contract for Castle Rock Entertainment, where he befriended colleagues William Goldman and Rob Reiner, and met his future wife Julia Bingham, who was one of Castle Rock's business affairs lawyers. Sorkin wrote several drafts of the script for A Few Good Men in his Manhattan apartment, learning the craft from a book about screenplay format. He then spent several months at the Los Angeles offices of Castle Rock, working on the script with Reiner. Goldman, who regularly worked under contract at Castle Rock, became his mentor and helped him to adapt his stage play into a screenplay. The film, directed by Reiner, starred Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore and Kevin Bacon, and was produced by Brown. A Few Good Men was released in 1992 and was a box office success, grossing $243 million worldwide. Goldman also approached Sorkin with a story premise, which Sorkin developed into the script for the thriller Malice. Goldman oversaw the project as creative consultant while Sorkin wrote the first two drafts. However, he had to leave the project to finish the script for A Few Good Men, so screenwriter Scott Frank stepped in and wrote two drafts of the Malice screenplay. When production on A Few Good Men was completed, Sorkin resumed working on Malice right through the final shooting script. Harold Becker directed the 1993 film, which starred Nicole Kidman and Alec Baldwin. Malice had mixed reviews; Vincent Canby in The New York Times described the film as "deviously entertaining from its start through its a finish". Critic Roger Ebert gave it 2 out of 4 stars, and Peter Travers in a 2000 Rolling Stone review summarized it as having "suspense but no staying power". Sorkin's last screenplay under Castle Rock was The American President. Once again he worked with Goldman, who served as a creative consultant. It took Sorkin several years to write the screenplay for The American President, which started off at 385 pages; it was eventually reduced to a standard shooting script of around 120 pages. The film, also directed by Reiner, was critically acclaimed; Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times described it as "genial and entertaining if not notably inspired", and believed its most interesting aspects were the "pipe dreams about the American political system and where it could theoretically be headed." A Few Good Men, Malice and The American President grossed approximately $400 million worldwide. In the second half of the 1990s, Sorkin worked as a script doctor. He wrote some quips for Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage in 1996's The Rock. He worked on Excess Baggage, a 1997 comedy about a girl who stages her own kidnapping to get her father's attention, and rewrote some of Will Smith's scenes in Enemy of the State. Sorkin collaborated with Warren Beatty on several scripts, one of which was 1998's Bulworth. Beatty, known for occasionally personally financing his film projects through pre-production, also hired Sorkin to rewrite a script titled Ocean of Storms which never went into production. At one point, Sorkin sued Beatty for proper compensation for his work on the Ocean of Storms script; once the matter was settled, he resumed working on the script.
Sorkin conceived an idea to write about the behind-the-scenes happenings on a sports show while residing at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles writing the screenplay for The American President. He would work late, with the television tuned into ESPN, watching continuous replays of SportsCenter. The show inspired him to try to write a feature film about a sports show but he was unable to structure the story for film, so instead he turned his idea into a television series. Sports Night was produced by Disney and debuted on the ABC network in the fall of 1998. Sorkin fought with ABC during the first season over the use of a laugh track and a live studio audience. The laugh track was widely decried by critics as jarring, with Joyce Millman of Salon magazine describing it as "the most unconvincing laugh track you've ever heard". Sorkin commented that "once you do shoot in front of a live audience, you have no choice but to use the laugh track. Oftentimes [enhancing the laughs] is the right thing to do. Sometimes you do need a cymbal crash. Other times, it alienates me." The laugh track was gradually dialed down and was removed by the end of the first season. Sorkin was successful in the second season when ABC agreed to his demands, unburdening the crew of the difficulties of staging a scene for a live audience and leaving the cast with more time to rehearse. Although Sports Night was critically acclaimed, ABC canceled the show after two seasons due to low ratings. Sorkin entertained offers to continue the show on other channels, but declined because they were dependent on his involvement and he was already working on The West Wing.
Sorkin conceived the political drama The West Wing in 1997 when he went unprepared to a lunch with producer John Wells. In a panic he pitched to Wells a series centered on the senior staff of the White House, using leftover ideas from his script for The American President. He told Wells about his visits to the White House while doing research for The American President, and they found themselves discussing public service and the passion of the people who serve. Wells took the concept and pitched it to NBC, but was told to wait due to the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal. There was a concern that television audiences would not be able to take a series about the White House seriously. A year later, other networks started showing interest in The West Wing. NBC decided to give the project the green-light despite their previous reluctance. The pilot debuted in the fall of 1999 and was produced by Warner Bros. Television. The West Wing garnered nine Primetime Emmy Awards for its debut season, making the series a record holder for most Emmys won by a series in a single season at the time. Following the awards ceremony, there was a dispute about the acceptance speech for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. The West Wing episode "In Excelsis Deo" won, which was awarded to Sorkin and Rick Cleveland, but The New York Times reported that Sorkin ushered Cleveland off the stage before he could say even a few words. The story behind "In Excelsis Deo" is based on Cleveland's father, a Korean War veteran who spent the last years of his life on the street, as Cleveland explained in an essay titled "I Was the Dumb Looking Guy with the Wire-Rimmed Glasses". Sorkin and Cleveland continued their dispute in a public web forum at Television Without Pity in which Sorkin explained that he gives his writers "Story By" credit on a rotating basis "by way of a gratuity" and that he had thrown out Cleveland's script and started from scratch. Sorkin would eventually apologize to Cleveland. Cleveland and Sorkin also won the Writers Guild of America Award for Television: Episodic Drama at the 53rd Writer Guild of America Awards for "In Excelsis Deo". In 2001, after completing the second season of The West Wing, Sorkin had a drug relapse, and was arrested at Hollywood Burbank Airport for possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms, marijuana, and crack cocaine. He was ordered by a court to attend a drug diversion program. There was huge media interest but he made a successful recovery. In 2002, Sorkin criticized NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw's television special about a day in the life of a president, "The Bush White House: Inside the Real West Wing", comparing it to the act of sending a valentine to President George W. Bush instead of real news reporting. The West Wing aired on the same network, and so at the request of NBC's Entertainment President Jeff Zucker, Sorkin apologized, but later said, "there should be a difference between what NBC News does and what The West Wing TV series does." Sorkin wrote 87 screenplays for The West Wing, nearly every episode during the show's first four seasons. Sorkin described his role in the creative process as "not so much [that of] a showrunner or a producer. I'm really a writer." He admitted that this approach can have its drawbacks, saying that "out of 88 [West Wing] episodes that I did, we were on time and on budget never, not once." In 2003, at the end of the fourth season, Sorkin and fellow executive producer Thomas Schlamme left the show due to internal conflicts at Warner Bros. Television, leading to John Wells to serve as showrunner. Sorkin never watched any episodes beyond his writing tenure apart from "a minute" of the fifth season's first episode, describing the experience as "like watching somebody make out with my girlfriend." Sorkin later returned in the series finale for a cameo appearance as a guest at the inauguration of Matthew Santos.
