James L. Brooks (born May 9, 1940) is a three-time Academy Award, nineteen-time Emmy and Golden Globe-winning American producer, writer, and film director.
He is best known for producing American television programs such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Simpsons (in which he created miscellaneous characters, including the Bouvier family), Rhoda and Taxi. His best-known film is Terms of Endearment, for which he received three Academy Awards in 1984.
Daughters: Amy Brooks (I); born 1971 and Chloe Brooks. Son: Cooper Brooks.
Owns Gracie Films which produces "Simpsons, The" (1989).
He is among an elite group of 5 Directors who have won best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay (Orig/Adapted) for the same film. In 1984 he won all three for Terms of Endearment (1983). The other Directors are Leo McCarey, Billy Wilder, Francis Ford Coppola, and Peter Jackson (I).
Directed 9 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: 'Shirley Maclaine', Jack Nicholson, Debra Winger, John Lithgow, Holly Hunter, William Hurt (I), Albert Brooks (I), Helen Hunt (I), Greg Kinnear. Nicholson, Maclaine and Hunt won Oscars for their performances in one of Brooks' movies.
Member of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Writers Branch) [2006-]
Won 19 Prime Time Emmy awards - more than any person in history. As producer he has won 9 for "Simpsons, The" (1989), 3 for "Taxi" (1978), 3 for "Mary Tyler Moore" (1970) and 1 for "Tracey Ullman Show, The" (1987), and as writer he won 2 for "Mary Tyler Moore" (1970) and 1 for "Tracey Ullman Show, The" (1987).
