James Ryan (actor)
Encyclopedia
Career
In 1984, he appeared alongside Robert De NiroRobert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...
and Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television and film.Streep made her professional stage debut in 1971's The Playboy of Seville, before her screen debut in the television movie The Deadliest Season in 1977. In that same year, she made her film debut with...
in the romantic
Romance film
Romance films are love stories that focus on passion, emotion, and the affectionate involvement of the main characters and the journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Romance films make the love story or the search for love the main plot focus...
-drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
, Falling in Love. He appeared in Five Corners alongside Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster
Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....
and Tim Robbins
Tim Robbins
Timothy Francis "Tim" Robbins is an American actor, screenwriter, director, producer, activist and musician. He is the former longtime partner of actress Susan Sarandon...
, and stopped acting professionally in order to focus on writing and directing. His plays have been produced at Playwrights Horizons and Ensemble Studio Theatre, and the National Playwrights Conference, O'Neill Theater Center. He has received commissions from the Actors Theatre of Louisville and South Coast Repertory Company, and is a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and McKnight Foundation.
In 1999 he earned acclaim for his screenplay of The Young Girl and the Monsoon
The Young Girl and the Monsoon
The Young Girl and the Monsoon is a 1999 comedy-drama from Monsoon Productions and starring Terry Kinney and Ellen Muth. Writer-director, James Ryan, won Best Screenplay and the Gold Medal at the Wine Country Film Festival in 2000 for the film....
which he also directed. Ryan won Best Screenplay and the Gold Medal at the Wine Country Film Festival in 2000. His lead actress, the Dead Like Me
Dead Like Me
Dead Like Me was an American-Canadian comedy-drama television series starring Ellen Muth and Mandy Patinkin as grim reapers who reside and work in Seattle, Washington. Filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, the show was created by Bryan Fuller for the Showtime network, where it ran for two seasons...
star, Ellen Muth
Ellen Muth
Ellen Anna Muth is an American actress, known for her role as George Lass in Showtime's series Dead Like Me. Muth is a member of Intertel and Mensa.-Career:...
also won Best Actress at the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
(AFI). He has written screenplays for Hollywood Pictures, Warner Bros., Spring Creek Productions and Mr. Mudd.
He currently teaches screenwriting and playwriting at the Rugters University's MFA Theater program, and served as Chair, Actors Studio School of Drama at the New School University in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. He is author of Screenwriting From the Heart.