Aaron Sorkin Bio
Aaron Benjamin Sorkin, born June 9, 1961, in Manhattan, New York City, is an American screenwriter, playwright, and filmmaker. He is recognized for his fast-paced dialogue, extended monologues, and a recurring storytelling technique known as the “walk and talk,” which he developed alongside his frequent collaborator, director Thomas Schlamme. Across stage, television, and film, Sorkin has earned an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, five Primetime Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and two Writers Guild of America Awards, along with a Laurence Olivier Award nomination.
He is best known as the creator of the television series Sports Night, The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and The Newsroom, and as the writer of acclaimed films including A Few Good Men, The Social Network, Moneyball, and Steve Jobs. His Broadway work includes the plays A Few Good Men, The Farnsworth Invention, and To Kill a Mockingbird, as well as a 2023 revival of the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot. Sorkin has also built a second career as a film director, debuting behind the camera with Molly’s Game.
Early Life and Background
Aaron Benjamin Sorkin was born in Manhattan, New York City, on June 9, 1961, into a Jewish family, and was raised in the suburb of Scarsdale. His mother worked as a schoolteacher and his father was a copyright lawyer who had served in World War II and attended college on the G.I. Bill. Both his older sister and brother went on to become lawyers, and his paternal grandfather was one of the founders of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Sorkin has described himself as an “understudy,” having been born after a brother, Daniel, who died at birth.
He developed an early passion for performance, attending theatre productions such as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and That Championship Season, and playing General Bullmoose in the eighth-grade production of the musical Li’l Abner. At Scarsdale High School, he joined the drama and theatre club, eventually serving as vice president of the drama club in his junior and senior years before graduating in 1979.
In 1979, Sorkin enrolled at Syracuse University. After a difficult freshman year in which he failed a core requirement, he returned determined to improve and graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in musical theatre. He has often credited his Syracuse theatre teacher Arthur Storch, a disciple of Lee Strasberg, for shaping his approach to the craft, recalling Storch’s advice to “dare to fail.”
Path to Writing
After college, Sorkin moved to New York City, where he spent much of the 1980s as a struggling, sporadically employed actor. He worked a series of odd jobs, including delivering singing telegrams, driving a limousine, touring Alabama with the children’s theatre company Traveling Playhouse, handing out flyers for a hunting-and-fishing show, and bartending at Broadway’s Palace Theatre. It was during this period, while house-sitting for a friend and finding a typewriter, that he began writing and felt, in his words, “a phenomenal confidence and a kind of joy that I had never experienced before in my life.”
His first play, Removing All Doubt, was staged for drama students at Syracuse University in 1984, and his second play, Hidden in This Picture, debuted off-off-Broadway at the West Bank Cafe Downstairs Theatre Bar in 1988. The quality of those early works earned him a theatrical agent, and producer John A. McQuiggan commissioned him to expand the one-act into a full-length play called Making Movies, which debuted Off-Broadway in 1990.
Inspired by a phone conversation with his sister Deborah, a Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps lawyer, Sorkin wrote much of his courtroom drama A Few Good Men on cocktail napkins while bartending at the Palace Theatre. Producer David Brown purchased the film rights in 1988, and the play opened on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre in late 1989, running for 497 performances and setting the stage for Sorkin’s leap into Hollywood screenwriting.
Aaron Sorkin Career
Early Career (1983–1990)
During the early 1980s, Sorkin focused on building his writing credentials in theatre, gradually turning out plays that attracted the attention of New York producers. The staging of Removing All Doubt at Syracuse in 1984 marked his first professional production, followed four years later by Hidden in This Picture, which led to his first theatrical agent and his first commission for a full-length work, Making Movies.
The Broadway run of A Few Good Men in 1989 established Sorkin as a writer of consequence. The courtroom drama starred Tom Hulce, was directed by Don Scardino, and ran for 497 performances at the Music Box Theatre. Its success, combined with the strong early sales of the film rights to producer David Brown, opened the door to Sorkin’s move into feature films and television writing.
Breakthrough (1992–2010)
Sorkin’s film career began in earnest with the 1992 adaptation of A Few Good Men, directed by Rob Reiner and starring Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson, which introduced his dialogue style to a wide audience and produced the iconic line “You can’t handle the truth!” He went on to write the screenplay for The American President (1995), directed by Rob Reiner and starring Michael Douglas, and later delivered the biographical screenplay for Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), directed by Mike Nichols and starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
On television, Sorkin became a defining voice of the era. Sports Night, a behind-the-scenes comedy about a cable sports show, debuted on ABC in 1998 and ran for two critically praised seasons. The West Wing followed in 1999 on NBC, chronicling the senior staff of a fictional Democratic White House; the series won nine Primetime Emmy Awards in its first season, a record at the time, and earned Sorkin four Outstanding Drama Series Emmys and an Outstanding Writing Emmy for the episode “In Excelsis Deo.” Sorkin left the show in 2003, and his next effort, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006–2007), ran for a single season on NBC.
The year 2010 marked Sorkin’s return to film with a project of unusual cultural impact. Released on October 1, 2010, and directed by David Fincher, The Social Network dramatized the founding of Facebook and earned Sorkin the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, as well as a BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe Award. The film cemented his reputation as one of the most distinctive screenwriters of his generation.
Notable Works and Milestones
Sorkin’s signature body of work spans the play A Few Good Men, the television series The West Wing, and the films The Social Network, Moneyball, and Steve Jobs, each of which earned major industry recognition. His work on The Social Network produced his Academy Award, BAFTA, and Golden Globe wins, while his screenplay for Steve Jobs earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay in 2015. He also made his directorial debut with Molly’s Game (2017), followed by The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) and Being the Ricardos (2021).
Aaron Sorkin Award Nominations
Aaron Sorkin has received a substantial number of nominations throughout his career across film, television, and theatre. He has been nominated for ten Golden Globe Awards, fourteen Writers Guild of America Awards, and five British Academy Film Awards, and has received seven Critics’ Choice Movie Awards nominations. For his work on television, Sorkin has received nine Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including multiple nods for Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series, and his work in theatre has earned him a Laurence Olivier Award nomination.
Aaron Sorkin Awards Won
Aaron Sorkin has won an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, five Primetime Emmy Awards, and two Writers Guild of America Awards. His Primetime Emmy wins include four for Outstanding Drama Series for The West Wing, awarded in 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003, along with an Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series Emmy for the episode “In Excelsis Deo” in 2000. He also received two Critics’ Choice Movie Awards for Best Screenplay, for The Social Network and Moneyball.
Aaron Sorkin Family
Aaron Sorkin was raised in a Jewish family in Scarsdale, New York, by a schoolteacher mother and a copyright lawyer father who had served in World War II. Both his older sister and brother went on to become lawyers, and his paternal grandfather was one of the founders of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. He has a daughter, Roxanne Sophie, born in November 2000, who works as a filmmaker and an actress.
Personal Life
Sorkin married Julia Bingham in 1996, and the couple divorced in 2005, a period in which his workaholic habits and struggles with drug addiction became a matter of public record. He began using marijuana and cocaine in 1987, sought treatment at the Hazelden Institute in 1995, and in April 2001 was arrested at Hollywood Burbank Airport for possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms, marijuana, and crack cocaine. In a 2012 commencement speech at Syracuse University, Sorkin said he had not used cocaine for eleven years. He suffered a stroke in November 2022 caused by hypertension, an event he later described as “a loud wake-up call” that led him to quit smoking, change his diet, and begin exercising daily.
