Steven ZaillianFilmography

Born:: January 30, 1953 in Fresno, California
Occupation:: Director, Editor, Producer, Screenwriter
Biography:: Steven Zaillian graduated from San Francisco State University in 1975 with a degree in Cinema, and began his career as an editor on Breaker! Breaker! (aka Cindy Jo and the Texas Turnaround [1977]), Kingdom of the Spiders (1977), Starhops (aka Curb Service [1978]), Below the Belt (1980), and other...Read More

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Red Riding

Crew: Producer, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Director Ridley Scott reteams up with his American Gangster scribe Steve Zaillian to adapt David Peace's series of novels concerning political corruption during a string of child abductions with this Columbia Pictures production. The books were previously adapted in a British tv mini-series, which Read More

1/1/12
I Heard You Paint Houses

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Robert De Niro

Synopsis: Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro tackle the crime genre once again with this adaptation of Charles Brandt's book about the life of Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran, a real-life mob hitman who purports to have killed union organizer Jimmy Hoffa. De Niro will play Sheeran, with Scorsese directing from Read More

1/1/11
My Dinner With Herve

Crew: Producer

Synopsis: The tragic story of Fantasy Island's Herve Villechaize is brought to life with this Mandate Pictures biopic, written and directed by Sacha Gervasi (Anvil! The True Story of Anvil), who participated in the final interview with the actor before his death. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide Read More

1/1/10
Moneyball

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Brad Pitt, Demetri Martin

Synopsis: Brad Pitt stars in the real-life tale of Major League Baseball general manager Billy Beane, who built up a winning team despite a decreased budget thanks to his sly use of statistical data to calculate the best -- and cheapest -- players for his roster. Aaron Sorkin updates Steve Zaillian's Read More

1/1/10
American Gangster

Crew: Executive Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Josh Brolin

Synopsis: Director Ridley Scott spins this yarn concerning a Harlem drug kingpin (Denzel Washington) who smuggles heroin into the country by hiding it in the bodies of U.S. soldiers killed during battle in Vietnam. There was a time when no one noticed reserved driver Frank Lucas (Washington), but when the Read More

11/2/07
All the King's Men

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo

Synopsis: The legacy of a populist Southern politician whose lofty ambitions for the future leave him open to corruption and scandal is detailed as author Robert Penn Warren's thinly veiled portrait of Depression-era Louisiana governor Huey Long comes to the screen -- again -- this time courtesy of director Read More

9/22/06
The Interpreter

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn, Catherine Keener, Jesper Christensen, Yvan Attal

Synopsis: An overheard conversation leads a woman into a dark world of deadly intrigue in this political thriller. Silvia Broome (Nicole Kidman) is an African émigré who works as an interpreter at the United Nations. One of the languages she understands is Ku, a dialect spoken in her home country of Matobo. Read More

4/22/05
Gangs of New York

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz, Jim Broadbent, John C. Reilly

Synopsis: The violent rise of gangland power in New York City at a time of massive political corruption and the city's evolution into a cultural melting pot set the stage for this lavish historical epic, which director Martin Scorsese finally brought to the screen almost 30 years after he first began to Read More

2002
Black Hawk Down

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Jason Isaacs, Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana, William Fichtner, Ewen Bremner, Sam Shepard

Synopsis: A quickly forgotten chapter in United States military history is relived in this harrowing war drama from director Ridley Scott, based on a series of Philadelphia Inquirer articles and subsequent book by reporter Mark Bowden. On October 3rd, 1993, an elite team of more than 100 Delta Force Read More

12/28/01
Hannibal

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore, Ray Liotta, Frankie R. Faison, Giancarlo Giannini

Synopsis: Based on the controversial sequel novel of the same name, Hannibal is the much-anticipated follow-up to the Oscar-winning The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Anthony Hopkins returns as Dr. Hannibal Lecter, one of the world's most cunning and feared serial killers, who resurfaces after a decade in Read More

2/9/01
A Civil Action

Crew: Director, Executive Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Kathy Bates, John Travolta, Robert Duvall, Tony Shalhoub, William H. Macy, Zeljko Ivanek

Synopsis: Directed by Schindler's List screenwriter Steve Zaillian, this courtroom drama is based on a true story and non-fiction book by Jonathan Harr. The case revolves around an incident in 1979 in East Woburn, MA, where two drinking wells supplying water to the town were found to be contaminated with Read More

12/25/98
Mission: Impossible

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, Emmanuelle Béart, Henry Czerny, Jean Reno

Synopsis: After he is framed for the death of several colleagues and falsely branded a traitor, a secret agent embarks on a daring scheme to clear his name in this spy adventure. Though it drew its name from the familiar television series, director Brian DePalma's big-budget adaptation shares little more Read More

5/22/96
Clear and Present Danger

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Harrison Ford, Willem Dafoe, Anne Archer, Joaquim de Almeida, Henry Czerny

Synopsis: This is the third film based on Tom Clancy's high-tech espionage potboilers starring CIA deputy director Jack Ryan. Harrison Ford, returning to the Ryan role after his first go-round in 1992's Patriot Games, is assigned to a delicate anti-drug investigation after a close friend of the President (a Read More

1994
Jack the Bear

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Danny DeVito, Robert J. Steinmiller, Miko Hughes, Gary Sinise, Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Synopsis: Marshall Herskovitz directed this tearjerking schizophrenic combination of The Wonder Years and To Kill a Mockingbird. It is 1972, and John Leary (Danny De Vito) and his two sons Jack (Robert J. Steinmiller Jr.) and Dylan (Miko Hughes) have just moved to Oakland, California. John is a television Read More

1993
Aspen Extreme

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Paul Gross, Peter Berg, Finola Hughes, Teri Polo, William Russ

Synopsis: T.J. (Paul Gross) and Dex (Peter Berg) leave Detroit to wax up their skis and find an adventurous new life on the slopes of Aspen in this skiing drama. The two become instructors and take up residence in a mobile home, at first fulfilling their ultimate bachelor fantasy. But T.J. becomes torn Read More

1993
Alive

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Ethan Hawke, Vincent Spano, Josh Hamilton, Bruce Ramsay, John Haymes Newton

Synopsis: This is the first mainstream film to deal with the harrowing true story of a Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains in October of 1972 and who were forced to resort to cannibalism to survive more than two months of isolation. (The only other film to tackle the subject Read More

1993
Schindler's List

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Caroline Goodall, Jonathan Sagall

Synopsis: Based on a true story, Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List stars Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler, a German businessman in Poland who sees an opportunity to make money from the Nazis' rise to power. He starts a company to make cookware and utensils, using flattery and bribes to win military Read More

1993
Searching for Bobby Fischer

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Joe Mantegna, Max Pomeranc, Joan Allen, Ben Kingsley, Laurence Fishburne

Synopsis: Searching for Bobby Fischer was inspired by the life of chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin, as written by his father Fred Waitzkin. Josh (Max Pomeranc) is a "regular kid" who begins evincing signs of being a genius at chess. His father (Joe Mantegna) encourages this, hoping that it won't fundamentally Read More

1993
Patriot Games

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Harrison Ford, Anne Archer, Patrick Bergin, Sean Bean, Thora Birch

Synopsis: In Patriot Games, Harrison Ford plays former CIA agent Jack Ryan, taking over from Alec Baldwin, who had played author Tom Clancy's brainy protagonist in Hunt for Red October. This time around, Ryan foils an attempted assassination, thereby incurring the wrath of a maniacal Irish radical (Sean Bean Read More

6/5/92
Awakenings

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Robin Williams, Robert De Niro, Julie Kavner, Ruth Nelson, John Heard, Penelope Ann Miller

Synopsis: Based on a true story as related by neurologist Oliver Sacks, Awakenings stars Robin Williams as the Sacks counterpart, here named Dr. Malcolm Sayer. Something of a klutz and naif, Dr. Sayer takes a job at a Bronx psychiatric hospital in 1969. Here he's put in charge of several seemingly catatonic Read More

12/20/90
The Falcon and the Snowman

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, David Suchet, Lori Singer, Pat Hingle

Synopsis: John Schlesinger directed this fact-based drama - adapted from Robert Lindsay's bestseller of the same title -- about two Californians, friends since boyhood, who are caught selling government secrets to the Soviet Union. Christopher Boyce (Timothy Hutton) is an all-American boy, studying for the Read More

1985
Below the Belt

Crew: Editor

Actors: Regina Baff, Mildred Burke, John C. Becher, Annie McGreevey, Jane O'Brien

Synopsis: Waitress Regina Baff would do anything to escape her go-nowhere existence. And by "anything", that means she'd be willing to risk life and limb in the wrestling ring, disguised as "The Mexican Spitfire" (never mind that she's Polish). Trained by veteran lady wrestler Mildred Burke (playing Read More

1980
Starhops

Crew: Editor

Actors: Dorothy Buhrman, Sterling Frazier, Jillian Kesner, Anthony Mannino

Synopsis: Three mammarous carhops team up to save their fast-food drive-in from financial ruin in this low-budget exploitation outing. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

1978
Breaker! Breaker!

Crew: Editor

Actors: George Murdock, Terry O'Connor, Don Gentry, John di Fusco, Ron Cedillos

Synopsis: A typical Chuck Norris vehicle from the late '70s, Breaker! Breaker! is neither the first nor the last Hollywood attempt to translate the wide appeal of trucking into big-screen profits. Alhough, it is probably the least successful. In this "modern" Western, a small California town is ruled by the Read More

1977
Kingdom of the Spiders

Crew: Editor

Actors: William Shatner, Tiffany Bolling, Woody Strode, Lieux Dressier, Altovise Davis

Synopsis: In Kingdom of the Spiders a swarm of huge tarantulas, enraged by the misuse of pesticides, try to take over their part of the world. Dr. Robert Hansen (William Shatner), a local Arizona veterinarian joins forces with entomologist Diane Ashley (Tiffany Bolling) to keep the spider population under Read More

1977