Anna Hamilton Phelan
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Anna Hamilton Phelan is an American actress and scriptwriter. She has been nominated for an Oscar for her work on ''
Gorillas in the Mist ''Gorillas in the Mist'' is a 1988 American drama film directed by Michael Apted and starring Sigourney Weaver as the naturalist Dian Fossey. It tells the story of her work in Rwanda with mountain gorillas and was nominated for five Academy Aw ...
'', and was also nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for her work on ''
Mask A mask is an object normally worn on the face, typically for protection, disguise, performance, or entertainment and often they have been employed for rituals and rights. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and pra ...
''.


Life

Phelan grew up in central
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
. She studied theater arts at Emerson College in Boston until 1965. Phelan left Boston after her studies and moved to New York City to pursue a career as a theatre actress. There she started to write her own monologues. After a few years in New York, Phelan moved to Los Angeles, where she worked as an actress in TV productions. She took a serious turn to scriptwriting when she "was in a television film as a dance hall girl and the producer recast her as the madam." Phelan later combined her written monologues with feminist texts and toured with her solo show ''Corsages and Ketchup'' in the early 1970s. Afterwards she married and became a mother of two kids. During her training at Harbor General Hospital she met Roy L. Dennis (1961–1978) and later his mother Florence Tullis, and convinced her to write a script about her son's story. Phelan attended two workshops of screenwriter
Syd Field Sydney Alvin Field (December 19, 1935November 17, 2013) was an American author and speaker who wrote several books on screenwriting, the first being '' Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting'' (Dell Publishing, 1979). He led workshops and s ...
and during the second workshop she wrote the first draft of ''
Mask A mask is an object normally worn on the face, typically for protection, disguise, performance, or entertainment and often they have been employed for rituals and rights. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and pra ...
'', which was made into a feature film in 1985 by
Peter Bogdanovich Peter Bogdanovich (July 30, 1939 – January 6, 2022) was an American director, writer, actor, producer, critic, and film historian. One of the " New Hollywood" directors, Bogdanovich started as a film journalist until he was hired to work on ...
. She then was approached by the head of
Universal Pictures Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Ameri ...
at the time,
Frank Price Frank Price (born May 17, 1930) is a television writer and executive during the 1950s to 1970s, and a Hollywood studio chief in the 1980s. He held a number of executive positions including head of Universal TV in the 1970s; president, and later ...
, who asked her to write the screenplay for ''
Gorillas in the Mist ''Gorillas in the Mist'' is a 1988 American drama film directed by Michael Apted and starring Sigourney Weaver as the naturalist Dian Fossey. It tells the story of her work in Rwanda with mountain gorillas and was nominated for five Academy Aw ...
.'' After that, she specialized her work as a scriptwriter on "women's parts, experience, and preference." She has been known to go through extensive research prior to writing her films and roles. Before writing '' Into the Homeland'', a film about a group of Neo-Nazi's who kidnap the daughter of an ex-cop, Phalan spent time at the headquarters of a far right organization in order to gain more knowledge of the roles she was writing.


Themes

She is known for writing strong women's roles, such as Cher's role in ''Mask'' (1985), as a caring and supportive mother towards her son who has a skull deformity, and
Sigourney Weaver Susan Alexandra "Sigourney" Weaver (; born October 8, 1949) is an American actress. A figure in science fiction and popular culture, she has received various accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Gramm ...
's part in ''Gorillas in the Mist'' (1988), who devotes her life to the study of primates and a strong fighter against illegal poaching in the African jungle. After ''Gorillas in the Mist'', Sigourney Weaver told her "if you and other writers stop writing about female characters, then our daughters and granddaughters will have no female images on the screen to identify with at all" and Phelan took that as a responsibility of hers to keep creating positive roles for women on screen.


Filmography


Writer

* ''
Mask A mask is an object normally worn on the face, typically for protection, disguise, performance, or entertainment and often they have been employed for rituals and rights. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and pra ...
'' (1985) * '' Into the Homeland'' (1987) * ''
Gorillas in the Mist ''Gorillas in the Mist'' is a 1988 American drama film directed by Michael Apted and starring Sigourney Weaver as the naturalist Dian Fossey. It tells the story of her work in Rwanda with mountain gorillas and was nominated for five Academy Aw ...
'' (1988) * '' In Love and War'' (1996) * '' Girl, Interrupted'' (1999) * '' Amelia'' (2009)


Actress

* ''
Mask A mask is an object normally worn on the face, typically for protection, disguise, performance, or entertainment and often they have been employed for rituals and rights. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and pra ...
'' (1985)


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Phelan, Anna Living people American screenwriters Place of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people) American women screenwriters Writers Guild of America 21st-century American women