Born in Manhattan and raised in upstate New York, Gilroy was steeped in writing for audiences from an early age. His father was Frank D. Gilroy, author of the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “The Subject Was Roses,” and a successful screenwriter and film director (“From Noon Til Three,” 1973). Gilroy left home at an early age and relocated to Boston, MA, where he focused on writing and performing music. He shifted gears in his early twenties to fiction, moving back to New York, where he began considering screenwriting in earnest. He sold his first script at 30, but the project – a feature for Chuck Norris – never saw the light of day.
Gilroy labored at screenwriting until 1992, when a script he envisioned as a 1930s-style screwball comedy was purchased and transformed into “The Cutting Edge,” a teen-oriented comedy-romance about figure skating. The film proved immensely popular with younger female audiences, launching Gilroy’s career. Over the next few years, he showed a knack for clever, literate thrillers, such as the Stephen King adaptation “Dolores Claiborne” (1995) – his first of several films for Taylor Hackford – “Extreme Measures” (1996), and the legal fantasy “The Devil’s Advocate” (1997). It was during the making of this film, that Gilroy seized upon the notion that the darkest deeds happened behind the closed doors of major firms – an idea that would later form the nucleus of “Michael Clayton.”
Gilroy was one of four screenwriters who tackled the disaster epic “Armageddon” (1998), and later reunited with Hackford for the underrated hostage drama “Proof of Life” (2000). Shortly thereafter, Gilroy met with Doug Liman on a script for “The Bourne Identity” (2002), a high-energy spy film based on the novels by Robert Ludlum. Liman had passed on one of Gilroy’s scripts prior to the meeting, and the writer later admitted that this snub was the primary reason for his attending the sit-down. He walked away from the meeting with an assignment to rewrite the “Bourne” script, which later yielded a massive international hit. Gilroy spent the next few years penning both “Bourne” sequels – “The Bourne Supremacy” (2004) and “The Bourne Ultimatum” (2007) – and netting a USC Scripter Award nomination for “Supremacy.”
Gilroy decided to make his debut as writer and director in 2007 with “Clayton.” He met his star and executive producer, George Clooney, through their mutual friend, writer-director Steven Soderbergh. The modestly budgeted thriller earned unanimously positive reviews from critics – though box office was far from spectacular – and found itself on the receiving end of countless award lists at the end of 2007. Among the more notable accolades were screenplay nominations from the Writers Guild of America, the BAFTA Awards, and the 2008 Academy Awards, which also nominated his turn as director, as well as the picture as a whole. “Clayton” also served to introduce Gilroy to Julia Roberts, a close friend of Clooney’s who tapped him to direct her next film, 2009’s “Duplicity.”