Maryemark · Public domain

Won back-to-back Academy Awards for adapting One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and writing the original screenplay for Melvin and Howard (1980), two films built on very different kinds of American outsiders. Goldman went on to write The Rose, Shoot the Moon, Scent of a Woman and Meet Joe Black, building a body of work known for character studies that resisted easy sentiment, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Writers Guild of America in 1998.