An American director and producer who was born in Atlanta, Georgia, USA to a father of Swedish-Irish origins and to a mother of Italian origins. His family moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his father worked there as dean of the College of Education at Louisiana State University. While in high school, he took a university class in animation. Then he went to Hollywood, where he worked as an editor and then returned home and continued making films and writing scripts. He made many films, the most important of which are Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), Traffic (2000), Behind the Candelabra (2013), and Erin Brockovich (2000). He won an Oscar for Best Director for Traffic in 2001. He married actress Betsy Brantley in 1989, and they had one child. After they got divorced, he married actress and writer Jules Asner in 2003.