Gregory Hoblit

Director Gregory Hoblit spun his success as part of the production team on three popular and influential television programs into a second career as director of a number of big-screen hits. Born in Texas in 1944, Gregory Hoblit's father was a law enforcement officer whose career took his family to California when Gregory was a child. Hoblit attended college in California, doing his undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley and U.C.L.A., and returning to U.C.L.A. to receive his graduate degree in Film and Television. After leaving U.C.L.A., Hoblit found work in Chicago, where he produced and directed local television programs. Having established himself in the Midwest, Hoblit came back to California in the 1970s, where he produced and directed a variety of television projects, documentaries, and independent feature films. In 1979, Hoblit began a fruitful collaboration with noted television producer Steven Bochco; they were both producers on the short-lived series Paris (starring James Earl Jones), and Hoblit was later an executive producer on Bochco's groundbreaking police series Hill Street Blues. Hoblit went on to direct a number of episodes of Hill Street Blues, and in 1986, when Bochco helped create the series L.A. Law, Hoblit was tapped to direct the two-hour pilot film for the show, as well as a number of subsequent episodes. After his success with L.A. Law, Hoblit went on to produce and direct the acclaimed made-for-TV movie Roe vs. Wade, and in 1993 reteamed with Bochco as an executive producer for yet another acclaimed TV series involving crime and punishment in America, NYPD Blue. After a final made-for-TV movie, 1993's Class of '61, Hoblit scored his big break in theatrical filmmaking with the 1996 drama Primal Fear, which earned Edward Norton an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. After Primal Fear, Hoblit went on to direct two supernaturally themed dramas, Fallen and Frequency; in 2002, he returned with the period wartime drama Hart's War.

~ All Movie Guide