Billy Ray | |
|---|---|
 Ray in 2007 | |
| Born | 1962 (age 61–62) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Film director, screenwriter |
| Spouse | Stacy Sherman |
Billy Ray (born 1962) [1] is an American screenwriter and film director. He began writing for television and movies in 1994 with Color of Night. [2] He has written numerous films including the first Hunger Games film (2012), Richard Jewell (2019), and Captain Phillips (2013) earning an Oscar nomination for the latter.
Ray was born in Los Angeles, and raised in Encino, Los Angeles, California. He is from a Jewish family, and attended Steven Wise Temple and Birmingham High School. [3] [1] [4] Starting in 2003, he began to direct as well as write; his first film was Shattered Glass, inspired by the true story of Stephen Glass, a journalist who fabricated a majority of his stories. [5] He was nominated for the Most Promising Filmmaker by the Chicago Film Critics Association and an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay for his work on this film. [6] Breach (2007), which Ray co-wrote and directed, tells a similar story about Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and later, Russia, for more than two decades, and Eric O'Neill, who worked as his assistant and helped bring about his downfall. [7]
He is perhaps best known for writing the screenplay to the 2012 blockbuster, The Hunger Games , and his Academy Award-nominated screenplay for the 2013 film, Captain Phillips . Ray also worked with the advertising agency Barkley to help write the AMC Theatres 2021 "We Make Movies Better" campaign starring Nicole Kidman. [8]
Films
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1994 | Color of Night | No | Yes | No |
| 1995 | The Shooter | No | Yes | No |
| 1997 | Volcano | No | Yes | No |
| 1998 | Legalese | No | Yes | No |
| 2002 | Hart's War | No | Yes | No |
| 2003 | Shattered Glass | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2004 | Suspect Zero | No | Yes | No |
| 2005 | Flightplan | No | Yes | No |
| 2007 | Breach | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2009 | State of Play | No | Yes | No |
| 2012 | The Hunger Games | No | Yes | No |
| 2013 | Captain Phillips | No | Yes | No |
| 2015 | The Breakup Girl | No | No | Yes |
| Secret in Their Eyes | Yes | Yes | No | |
| 2018 | Overlord | No | Yes | No |
| 2019 | Gemini Man | No | Yes | No |
| Terminator: Dark Fate | No | Yes | Co-producer | |
| Richard Jewell | No | Yes | No |
Television
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Executive Producer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1994–1995 | Earth 2 | No | Yes | No | Co-creator |
| 2016–2017 | The Last Tycoon | Yes | Yes | Yes | Also developer |
| 2020 | The Comey Rule | Yes | Yes | Yes | Miniseries |
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In September 2021, AMC Theatres began airing a commercial starring actress Nicole Kidman in its theaters and on television. The ad, written by screenwriter Billy Ray, was intended to spur theater attendance following the COVID-19 pandemic by highlighting the "magic" of the movie theater experience. In the ad, Kidman enters and sits alone in an empty AMC theater while delivering a monologue describing in heightened language the pleasures of the moviegoing experience, such as the "indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim and we go somewhere we've never been before". The commercial became a surprise hit among audiences, with its earnestly rhapsodic style and script — particularly the line "Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this.” — developing a certain camp appeal. It has inspired internet memes, parodies, and in-theatre audience participation rituals.
Ray, 53, said that he and the show's executive producer, Christopher Keyser, deliberately increased the story's Jewish content because they both are Jewish
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