Stephen Gaghan (born May 6, 1965) is an Academy Award and Emmy Award-winning American film writer and director. He is noted for writing the screenplay for Steven Soderbergh's film Traffic, based on a Channel 4 series, for which he won the Academy Award, as well as the Academy Award-nominated Syriana which he directed and wrote.

Childhood and education

Born in either in Louisville, Kentucky or Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaMultiple sources, online and otherwise, state that the director was born in Louisville. However, a woman claiming to be Gaghan's aunt, Gloria Gaghan Hamilton, a writer of science fiction, has stated in several Gaghan forums that the director was born in Philadelphia, his father's hometown and the city where his paternal grandfather achieved prominence as a journalist. In interviews, Gaghan has stated that he is from Louisville, though he does not appear to have categorically stated that he was born there., the son of the former Elizabeth Jane Whorton and her first husband, Stephen Gaghan (d. 1980), and a stepson of Tom Haag, Gaghan attended Kentucky Country Day School, a college preparatory school in Louisville. He is a grandson of Jerry Gaghan, a newspaper columnist and drama critic for Variety and the Philadelphia Daily News, whose career inspired Gaghan's own professional pursuits.George Skinner, a Broadcast Pioneer As he wrote in a 2001 article in Newsweek, "I also wanted to be a writer, like my grandfather, who carried a card in his wallet that read, "If you find me, call my son father at this number..."The Enemy is Every One of Us | Newsweek | Find Articles at BNET.com