Kevin Williamson Biography

Date of Birth: March 14, 1965

Kevin Williamson was born in New Bern, North Carolina and while a young adult, studied theater at East Carolina University. After graduation, he moved to New York to pursue acting. A few small parts on stage and television later, he packed his bags and headed west to Los Angeles to try his hand at the less glamorous side of the business: writing and directing.

Working as the assistant to a music video director by day, Williamson wrote by night. Ironically, his first script that he managed to sell was only made into a film after the success of his later works. Teaching Mrs. Tingle was a black comedy about a group of students determined to do in their detested teacher. Right from the start, it was clear that the group Williamson was most connected to was teenagers.

Scream, his second original work, was not only a smashing success, it is credited with single-handedly reviving the teen slasher genre. Directed by horror master Wes Craven and starring a bunch of rising young talent (including Drew Barrymore, Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, Rose McGowan, and David Arquette), Scream marked Williamson¹s entry into the big time.

Following up on Scream's success, Williamson helped feed Hollywood's overnight hunger for youth oriented horror. Less than a year later, I Know What You Did Last Summer followed Scream to the top of the box office and over the $100 million mark. This was a height previously only attained in the horror genre with The Exorcist. IKWYDLS also starred a group of today's hottest up-and-comers. With the help of Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe and Freddie Prinze Jr., this film brought in its target audience in swarms. Williamson wasn't a fluke, he had done it twice. In fact, in the tradition of the horror genre, he would do it again with the sequels.

With a talent for writing scripts that plug directly into the hearts and minds of young people (a talent formerly seen in director John Hughes during the 80s) it is little wonder that he would be drawn to television where he could grow characters over time and allow them to develop. With Fox's Dawson's Creek, a teen soap opera, Williamson cashed in once again. Infused with clever writing and more realistic-than-usual storylines, Creek is a consistent Nielsen darling.

But he wasn't finished with horrors quite yet. Next, he took the job of writing the treatment for the sequel to John Carpenter's Halloween, which saw the pairing of "Scream Queen" Jamie Lee Curtis and Michelle Williams of Creek fame. The Faculty was yet another of his scripts brought to the big screen, this time by Robert Rodriguez. At long last, Teaching Mrs. Tingle, starring another young Creek starlet, Katie Holmes, hit theaters in1999, which did not meet with the same success as his previous efforts. As for the final installment of Scream, which hit theatres in February 2000, Williamson only served as a producer.

Filmography:

Her Leading Man (2000) Screenwriter, Director
Scream 3 (2000) Producer, Screenwriter (characters)
Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999) Screenwriter, Director
The Faculty (1998) Screenwriter
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998) Screenwriter, Co-executive Producer
I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) Screenwriter
Scream 2 (1997) Actor, Screenwriter, Executive Producer
Scream (1996) Screenwriter
Dirty Money (1994) Actor