Career Highlights

• Produced music videos with Jay-Z, and Mary J. Blige before going on to direct award-winning films The Italian Job and The Negotiator
• Won the 2004 Special Achievement Award from the African American Film Critics Association
• Won Best Director For The Italian Job at the 2004 American Black Film Festival
• Named one of the “50 Best and Brightest African Americans under 40" by Black Enterprise magazine
• Law Abiding Citizen (starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler) is about a man's quest for revenge against his family's murderers and the justice system that set them free (October 2009)
• Supports the Tom Bradley Youth & Family Center in Los Angeles and created the F. Gary Gray Filmmaking Workshop with Urban Compass in Watts in order to inspire under-served youth to tell their unique stories through filmmaking

Career Overview

F. Gary Gray, accomplished music video and film director, grew up in South Central L.A. where he worked at a local public access channel during high school. In college he studied film and TV but dropped out to begin his career at BET, working the camera during shows. Later, Gray branched out to direct his first music videos. He eventually worked with clients like Ice Cube, Queen Latifah, TLC, Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, and Mary J. Blige, and won several awards for his projects. His first two feature films, Friday, staring Ice Cube and Chris Tucker, and Set If Off, staring Jada Pinkett Smith, were hits and established Gray as a filmmaker. He also directed A Man Apart, Be Cool, and award-winning films The Negotiator and The Italian Job.

Once Gray's directing career took off, he founded his own production company, Nucleus Entertainment, Inc. Gray has received many awards for his outstanding work including The Ivan Dixon Award of Achievement from the Black Hollywood Education and Resource Center, and the Artist Empowerment Award from the Artist Empowerment Coalition. His film The Negotiator had the highest budget ever for a film directed by an African-American filmmaker at that time; it earned Gray both Best Film and Best Director awards at the 1998 Acapulco Film Festival.

Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx star in Gray’s most recent thriller, Law Abiding Citizen, written by Kurt Wimmer. In the film, Butler’s wife and daughter are killed in a home invasion and Butler is told one of the murderers will go free. Butler seeks his own revenge not just on the killers, but also on the entire justice system. He issues a warning to the young Philadelphia prosecutor (Foxx) who is assigned to the case: fix the flawed justice system that failed his family, or key players in the trial will die. Law Abiding Citizen is set to be released on October 16, 2009.

Our Interview

F. Gary Gray will be sitting down with Zack Sherwood to answer student questions and share his best career advice for aspiring directors. Stay tuned!