Dustin Lance Black

Dustin Lance Black is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and LGBTQ rights activist. Born on June 10, 1974, he is best known for writing and producing the biographical drama Milk, which earned him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2009. His creative output also includes writing the feature films J. Edgar and Rustin, creating the 2022 true-crime limited series Under the Banner of Heaven, and writing the play 8.

Black was raised in a Mormon household with his mother, Roseanna, and two brothers, Marcus Raul and Todd Bryant, living first in San Antonio, Texas, before moving to Salinas, California. While attending North Salinas High School, he began working in theater at The Western Stage. He graduated from Pasadena City College in 1994 and transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Theater, Film, and Television (UCLA), where he worked on theater lighting crews and took acting jobs before graduating with honors in 1996.

In 2000, Black wrote and directed the gay romance film The Journey of Jared Price and the short film Something Close to Heaven. He followed this in 2001 by directing and appearing in the Burning Man documentary On the Bus. Black subsequently joined HBO's drama series Big Love as its only Mormon writer, serving as a staff writer in season one, executive story editor in season two, and co-producer in season three. In 2008, his screenplay for Pedro premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, receiving a Writers Guild of America Award nomination.

Following three years of research into Harvey Milk, Black wrote the spec screenplay for Milk, directed by Gus Van Sant. The film earned Black the 2009 Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. He went on to direct his script Virginia in 2010, write the Clint Eastwood-directed film J. Edgar in 2011, and write the staged drama 8, which recreates the federal trial that overturned California's Proposition 8. In 2019, Black published his memoir Mama's Boy: A Story From Our Americas, which was later adapted into a 2022 documentary released on HBO Max.

Beyond his creative career, Black is a founding board member of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which mounted the legal challenge to Proposition 8. He narrated the 2010 documentary 8: The Mormon Proposition, accepting its GLAAD Media Award for best documentary, and marched in the 2009 National Equality March. In 2023, his portrait was included in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery's "The Struggle for Justice" exhibition in Washington, D.C.

Black married British diver Tom Daley at Bovey Castle in May 2017 after getting engaged in October 2015. The couple has two sons, born by surrogacy in 2018 and 2023. They co-hosted a podcast discussing surrogacy that won Best Family Podcast at the British Podcast Awards in 2019. After previously living in London, Black and his family relocated to Los Angeles in 2024.