Biography
Eric R. Roth (born March 22, 1945) is an American screenwriter. He has been nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay: Forrest Gump (1994), The Insider (1999), Munich (2005), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), A Star Is Born (2018), and Dune (2021), winning for Forrest Gump; he also earned a Best Picture nomination for producing Mank (2020). Roth also worked on the screenplays for the Oscar-nominated films Ali (2001), Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011), and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023).
In 2026, Roth made his playwriting debut on London's West End with his stage adaptation of High Noon.
== Early life and education ==
Roth was born in New York City, New York, into a Jewish family, the son of Miriam "Mimi", a teacher, studio executive, and radio writer, and Leon Roth, a university teacher and film producer. He grew up in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn in New York. He grew up boxing and would credit some of his later successes to habits learned from the sport.
Roth went to college at the University of California, Santa Barbara and graduated in 1966. He later attended UCLA Film School as part of the class of 1973.
== Career ==
Roth won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Forrest Gump.