• Biography
• More Bios
• Movies

• More ...
• Filmbug Top 100
• Movie Dictionary

Browse ..
A-Z
By Date
By Year
By State
By Country

•  

Alan Ball is an Academy Award and Emmy Award winning writer and director. He is currently working on his new HBO series, True Blood, which he directed and adapted from the novel Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris. True Blood stars Anna Paquin as Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress in rural Louisiana. The series also features Stephen Moyer, Ryan Kwanten and Lois Smith. Ball is the Executive Producer and Creator of the series.

Towelhead is his feature film directorial debut, based on his screenplay adaptation of the novel Towelhead by Alicia Erian. The film stars Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, Toni Collette, Peter Macdissi and newcomer Summer Bishil.

In January 2007 Ball's play All That I Will Ever Be premiered at the New York Theatre Workshop - his first return to theater in over a decade.

Ball was the creator and Executive Producer of Six Feet Under, the critically acclaimed drama series on HBO. The series garnered many awards including three Golden Globes (including Best Drama Series), seven Emmy awards and a George Foster Peabody Award. Alan was awarded an Emmy and a DGA award for directing the pilot of Six Feet Under, his directorial debut.

Alan's first produced feature film screenplay was American Beauty, for which he received the 1999 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, the Writers Guild of America award for Best Original Screenplay, and the Golden Globe award for Best Screenplay, among others.

His other television credits include Oh Grow Up, Cybill and Grace Under Fire.

Prior to moving to Hollywood, he was a noted comedic playwright in New York. Among his numerous credits are Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, which premiered February 1993 at Manhattan Class Company, starring Thomas Gibson, Ally Walker and Allison Janney; 'The M Word," which premiered at the inaugural Lucille Ball Festival of New American Comedy in 1991; Made For a Woman; Bachelor Holiday; The Amazing Adventures of Tense Guy; and Your Mother's Butt. He was one of the founding members of Alarm Dog Rep.

Born in Atlanta, Ball was raised in Marietta, Georgia. He attended Florida State University, where he majored in theater, with an emphasis in acting and playwriting. After college, he moved to New York, where he first worked as an art director for various trade publications.