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Lee Hall
An extremely gifted and prolific playwright and screenwriter, Lee Hall garnered an Oscar nomination for his feature debut effort, the crowd-pleasing "Billy Elliot" (2000). Born and raised in the coal mining region, Hall drew on personal memories to flesh out this tale of a miner's son who has aspirations to become a ballet dancer. Set against the backdrop of a 1984 strike that nearly economically crippled the area, "Billy Elliot" functioned on several levels. It was at its core a family story but the scenes of the striking miners served as an historical reminder to British audiences and an education to those in other countries.