Lawrence Schiller (American, b.1936) is a producer, screenwriter, director, author, and photographer. He also works as a political and news consultant and analyst. Although he was born in Brooklyn, Schiller was raised in San Diego, CA, and attended Pepperdine College in Los Angeles. From a young age, Schiller was a noted photographer. His work has appeared in Life,Playboy, and The Saturday Evening Post, among other publications. He accomplished this despite suffering an eye injury early in his childhood.
After graduating, Schiller took photojournalist positions at Time, The Sunday Times, The Saturday Evening Post, Newsweek, Stern, and Paris Match. In 1966, he published his first book, LSD, and he has published 11 more since then, including New York Times Bestsellers Perfect Murder,Perfect Town, Into the Mirror, and American Tragedy, written in 1996 and featuring the O.J. Simpson trial. The artist has produced several iconic photographs of Marilyn Monroe, Barbra Streisand, Muhammad Ali, Robert F. Kennedy, and Lee Harvey Oswald. He also had a high-profile interview with Jack Ruby. Schiller broke into the world of film by directing part of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969 and Lady Sings the Blues in 1972. In the same year, Schiller directed The Man Who Skied Down Everest, an Oscar-winning documentary.
In 1975, Schiller collaborated with photographer William Eugene Smith (American, 1918–1978) to produce Minamata, exposing the effects of mercury poisoning in Japan. For almost 35 years, Schiller also collaborated with Norman Mailer (American, 1923–2007) to create many works together, including Executioner's Song, for which Mailer received the Pulitzer Prize and which later became a television miniseries directed and produced by Schiller. The miniseries won two Emmy Awards and would not be his last miniseries to do so. In 1986, after working with the Kremlin Peter the Great, Schiller earned three more Emmy Awards, including the award for Outstanding Miniseries. Schiller's photographs from the 1960s, Marilyn Monroe and America in the 1960s, were exhibited in New York, Beijing, Hong Kong, Berlin, and London in 2007. Schiller, a father of five children, works and lives in Los Angeles and New York.