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Leslie Dixon is an American screenwriter and producer. She has written and produced films such as (...).

Early Life

Leslie Dixon was born and raised in Manhattan, New York. Leslie Dixon is the granddaughter of photographer Dorthea Lange and painter Maynard Dixon. She grew up in California's Bay Area. At the age of 18, she was on her own and living alone in San Francisco without enough money to afford college. At the age of 26, she decided to move to Hollywood to make her way into the film industry as a writer. She had no contacts within the industry and began by working office jobs. Dixon then landed a job as a script reader. Through this job she learned how the words in the scripts were laid out on the page, what elements were needed to make a script appealing and successful, and the types of scripts that gained the most attention. This gave her insight into which movies were being made and those that were being pushed aside. She continued writing at night and after a year she came up with her first screenplay written with an (unknown) partner. She managed to get two offers for this script and sold it. Although it never made it into production, this was the beginning of her career.

Career

Dixon began her film writing career within the romantic comedy genre. Her first solo screenplay was Outrageous Fortune (1987), who she wrote for Shelley Long and Bette Midler. The idea for this screenplay came at Robert Cort's request for a "female buddy film" and sought after Dixon to pursue this task. After 10 successful years of writing comedies, which includes films such as Overboard (1987), Loverboy (1989), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) and That Old Feeling (1997), Dixon decided she needed to challenge herself. She felt like she was loosing her comedic touch and decided to tackle different genres, such as dramas and thrillers. She began by adopting novels, such as Edith Wharton's novel. This adaptation did not make it to the production phase but the quality of the script itself allowed Dixon to gain credit and recognition within the film industry. This led her to write a thriller, The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) and drama Pay It Forward (2000), both of which are adaptations. Dixon continued on this path, searching for the right novels to bring to the big screen. After reading Alan Glynn's The Dark Fields, which became Limitless (2011), she not only saw the potential of this novel as a feature but also wanted to jump into another genre; action.