American playwright, filmmaker and actor Michael Cristofer was BOTD in 1945. Born Michael Procaccino in Trenton, New Jersey, he started his show-business career as an actor before transitioning into playwriting. He won a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for the 1977 production of his for play Shadow Box, later filmed for television by Paul Newman. Lured to Hollywood in the 1980s, he wrote the screenplays for Falling In Love, The Witches of Eastwick and The Bonfire of the Vanities. He is perhaps best known for writing and directing the 1998 TV film Gia, based on the life of bisexual model Gia Carangi, providing an early star vehicle for Angelina Jolie. He also scored a hit with the trashily enjoyable erotic drama Original Sin, starring Jolie and Antonio Banderas. Cristofer was forced to trim the film’s steamy sex scenes to achieve an R-rating, leading to rumours of an offscreen relationship between Jolie and Banderas. In the 2000s, he became artistic director of River Arts Repertory in upstate New York, collaborating frequently with Newman and Joanne Woodward. In 2013, he and Terence Blanchard co-write the opera Champion, based on the life of bisexual prize fighter Emile Griffith. After a long hiatus, Cristopher returned to acting, appearing in the 2010 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge and in Tony Kushner‘s off-Broadway play The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. He has also appeared in the TV series American Horror Story: Coven, Ray Donovan, Elementary and Mr. Robot.