Gill Dennis was a writer, director and actor, best known for co-penning the script for the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. The acclaimed film earned Witherspoon a best actress Oscar for her performance as June Carter, and Phoenix a nomination for best lead actor.
Dennis’s other film credits include the scripts for Return to Oz, On My Own, The Man on Lincoln's Nose, Forever, Intermission and the Angelina Jolie thriller Without Evidence. The latter two he also directed. For television, he wrote the Showtime miniseries Home Fires and the TNT western Riders of the Purple Sage, starring Ed Harris and Amy Madigan.
Dennis attended Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh and served in the U.S. Army before getting his start as an uncredited writer on the 1979 film The Black Stallion.
When the American Film Institute established its Conservatory in 1969, the class of 18 students included Dennis, Terrence Malick, David Lynch and Caleb Deschanel. He graduated in 1971 after interning on the Sam Peckinpah film The Ballad of Cable Hogue. He returned in 1997 as a master filmmaker-in-residence and taught the incoming class in September of 2014.
Gill Dennis was a writer, director and actor, best known for co-penning the script for the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. The acclaimed film earned Witherspoon a best actress Oscar for her performance as June Carter, and Phoenix a nomination for best lead actor.
Dennis’s other film credits include the scripts for Return to Oz, On My Own, The Man on Lincoln's Nose, Forever, Intermission and the Angelina Jolie thriller Without Evidence. The latter two he also directed. For television, he wrote the Showtime miniseries Home Fires and the TNT western Riders of the Purple Sage, starring Ed Harris and Amy Madigan.
Dennis attended Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh and served in the U.S. Army before getting his start as an uncredited writer on the 1979 film The Black Stallion.
When the American Film Institute established its Conservatory in 1969, the class of 18 students included Dennis, Terrence Malick, David Lynch and Caleb Deschanel. He graduated in 1971 after interning on the Sam Peckinpah film The Ballad of Cable Hogue. He returned in 1997 as a master filmmaker-in-residence and taught the incoming class in September of 2014.
Dennis died May 13, 2015, in Portland, Oregon. He was 74.
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