Brian Thomas Helgeland born January 17, 1961 is an American screenwriter, film producer and director. He is most known for writing the screenplays for L.A. Confidential (for which he received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay), Mystic River, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. Helgeland also wrote and directed 42 (2013), a biopic of Jackie Robinson, and Legend (2015), about the rise and fall of the infamous London gangsters, the Kray twins. Helgeland was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to Norwegian-born parents Aud-Karin and Thomas Helgeland, and was raised in nearby New Bedford, Massachusetts. He majored in English at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth before following his father's work fishing scallop. One cold winter day in 1985 made Helgeland consider another job, after finding a book about film schools. Helgeland eventually settled on a career in film, considering his love for movies. He applied for the film school at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, as it was the only one which could accept him in the middle of the semester. Helgeland's agent arranged him a meeting with Rhet Topham, who had an idea for a horror comedy film but was having difficulty writing it. The resulting film was 976-EVIL, which the duo managed to sell for $12,000.976-EVIL marked the directorial debut of Freddy Krueger portrayer Robert Englund, who went on to recommend Helgeland as New Line Pictures wanted to do a new A Nightmare on Elm Street film. Helgeland was paid $70,000 to do what would become A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. Both films were released in 1988, with The Dream Master hitting theaters earlier. Another script, Highway to Hell, earned Helgeland $275,000 and got a film release in 1992. In 1998, Helgeland won both an Academy Award (for Best Adapted Screenplay with L.A. Confidential) and a Razzie (for The Postman) the same year. Only one person had previously achieved the dubious feat (Alan Menken in 1993), and only one other (Sandra Bullock in 2010) has achieved it since. He accepted the Razzie and became only the fourth person in its history to be personally presented with the statuette. He keeps the statues of both the Oscar and the Razzie on his mantle as "a reminder of Hollywood's idealistic nature and unrealistic expectations." Helgeland wrote and directed the films A Knight's Tale (2001), The Order (2003) and 42 (2013).

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