Leslie Dixon (born c. 1954) is an American screenwriter and film producer. She has written or co‑written more than 20 feature films and first gained recognition in Hollywood with the success of the comedy Outrageous Fortune (1987). Her screen credits include Overboard (1987), Look Who's Talking Now (1993), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Pay It Forward (2000), Freaky Friday (2003), Hairspray (2007) and the thriller Limitless (2011), which she also produced. She is the granddaughter of painter Maynard Dixon and photographer Dorothea Lange.

Early life Leslie Dixon is the granddaughter of photographer Dorothea Lange and landscaper painter Maynard Dixon.McCreadie, Marsha. Women Screenwriters Today: Their Lives and Words. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. 44-47. Print. Dixon grew up in the California Bay Area.Leslie Dixon and Tom Ropelewski List Beverly Hills House for $8.995 Million (Exclusive), The Hollywood Reporter, 6/12/2014Nelmes, Jill, and Jule Selbo. Women Screenwriters: An International Guide. N.p.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 778-79. Print. At the age of 18, she was living alone in San Francisco without enough money to afford college. Once she realized that she wanted to pursue writing, she moved to Hollywood at the age of 26 with hopes of making her way into the film industry. Having no contacts within the industry, she began by working office jobs for several years and eventually landed a job as a script reader. During her time as a script reader, she studied the scripts she was reading. She learned the structure of scripts, their layout on the page, the elements that were needed in order to make a script appealing and successful, and she recognized the types of scripts that gained the most attention from producers. This gave her insight into "what was and wasn’t being bought". After a year of living in Hollywood, she wrote her first screenplay (written with an unknown co-writer).Smith, S. 2011. ‘Leslie Dixon’s First Script Sale’. Available at: http://screenwritingfromiowa. wordpress.com/2011/12/17/leslie-dixons-first-script-sale/ Her partner got an agent attached to the piece, and after receiving two offers, it was sold to Columbia Pictures for $30,000. However, the screenplay never made it to production.

Career Her first solo screenplay was Outrageous Fortune (1987), written for Shelley Long and Bette Midler. The idea for the screenplay came at Robert Cort's request for a "female buddy film." From 1987 to 1997, Dixon continued to write romantic comedies, including Overboard (1987), Loverboy (1989), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), and That Old Feeling (1997). She also wrote an adaptation for The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), a re-write from Alan Trustman's original screenplay in 1968, and then the drama Pay It Forward (2000) based on Catherine Ryan Hyde's 1999 novel of the same name. After reading Alan Glynn's The Dark Fields, she wrote Limitless (2011).

In 2004, Dixon was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Writing for her Freaky Friday (2003) screenplay.

Personal life She is married to fellow screenwriter, producer and director Tom Ropelewski. Their son was born January 16, 1996. They reside in Berkeley, California.

Filmography

Feature films

Year Title Credit 1987 Outrageous Fortune Writer Overboard Writer 1989 Loverboy Co-Writer, Producer 1990 Madhouse Producer 1993 Look Who's Talking Now Executive Producer Mrs. Doubtfire Writer 1997 That Old Feeling Writer, Producer 1999 The Thomas Crown Affair Writer (re-write) 2000 Pay It Forward Writer The Next Best Thing Producer 2003 Freaky Friday Writer 2005 Just Like Heaven Writer 2007 Hairspray Writer (re-write) The Heartbreak Kid Writer 2011 Limitless Writer, Producer 2014 Gone Girl Executive Producer2018OverboardScreenplay by / story by

TV shows

Year Title Credit 2012-2013 The 85th Annual Academy Awards Writer 2015-2016 Limitless Co-executive Producer

References

External links