Douglas McGrath

Biography

Douglas Geoffrey McGrath (February 2, 1958 – November 3, 2022) was an American screenwriter, film director, and actor. He received various accolades, including nominations for an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, and Primetime Emmy Award. McGrath started his career as a writer for Saturday Night Live from 1980 to 1981. He co-wrote with Woody Allen the film Bullets Over Broadway (1994), for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay as well as BAFTA and Writers Guild of America Award nominations. He then directed such films as Emma (1996), Company Man (2000), Nicholas Nickleby (2002), and Infamous (2006). He also appeared in such films as Quiz Show (1994), The Daytrippers (1996), Happiness (1998), The Insider (1999), and Michael Clayton (2007). He also made appearances in television including a recurring role as Principal Toby Cook in Lena Dunham's HBO series Girls from 2015 to 2016. He also appeared in the Amazon Prime comedy series Crisis in Six Scenes (2016), and the Netflix western limited series Godless (2017). McGrath received a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical nomination for the Broadway musical Beautiful: The Carole King Musical in 2014. He also directed the HBO documentaries His Way (2011), and Becoming Mike Nichols (2016). He wrote political commentary, such as "The Flapjack File", a column for The New Republic, as well as articles for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair.