Terry George was an Academy Award nominee in the Best Original Screenplay category (with Keir Pearson) for Hotel Rwanda, which he also directed and produced (with Reservation Road producer A. Kitman Ho). Stars Don Cheadle and Sophie Okonedo also received Academy Award nominations for their performances in the film, among other honors. The film was also the first in which he directed Reservation Road star Joaquin Phoenix.
The drama about the brutal genocide of the Tutsis that consumed the African nation in the 1990s also received Best Picture nominations from the Golden Globe, Critics' Choice, and NAACP Image Awards, as well as the People's Choice Award at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival, among other accolades. The screenplay also earned BAFTA and Writers Guild of America Award nominations.
Mr. George earlier received Academy Award and BAFTA and WGA Award nominations for his very first produced script, In the Name of the Father. He adapted the screenplay with director Jim Sheridan from wrongfully imprisoned Irishman Gerry Conlon's autobiography Proved Innocent. The film received six additional Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture and its stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Emma Thompson, and Pete Postlethwaite, among other honors.
Mr. George made his directorial debut with Some Mother's Son, the drama about the mothers and sons affected by the real-life 1981 hunger strike in Britain protesting the treatment of jailed IRA members. The film, written by Mr. George and Jim Sheridan and starring Helen Mirren and Fionnula Flanagan, won the Audience Awards at the Angers European First Film Festival and the San Sebastian International Film Festival. The picture won Mr. George a European Film Award for Best Young Film.
He was next in the director's chair with the Emmy Award-nominated telefilm A Bright Shining Lie, which he adapted from Neil Sheehan's Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnam War book of the same name. Star Bill Paxton earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for his portrayal of John Paul Vann, the Lt. Colonel who was forced out of the military because of his outspoken opinions about the war in Vietnam but who later returned as a civilian advisor.
Mr. George's other screenwriting credits include The Boxer, written with director Jim Sheridan, which starred Daniel Day-Lewis, Emily Watson, and Brian Cox; and Gregory Hoblit's Hart's War.
With Jack Maple, he co-created and produced the television drama series The District, starring Craig T. Nelson. The program ran for four years, during which time Mr. George wrote and directed several episodes.
Before writing and directing films, the Belfast native wrote and produced plays at NYC's Irish Arts Center in the 1980s. It was there that Mr. George first collaborated with Jim Sheridan, on his 1985 play The Tunnel, based on Mr. George's own experiences as a prisoner in British jails in Northern Ireland.
He was given the U.S.-Ireland Alliance's Oscar Wilde Award, honoring screenwriting.
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