Leigh Whannell

Leigh Whannell
Whannell at the Saw 3D premiere in October 2010
Born	(1977-01-17) 17 January 1977 (age 40) Melbourne, Australia
Occupation	Actor, screenwriter, producer, director
Years active	1996–present
Spouse(s)	Corbett Tuck (m. 2009)
Children	1
Website	The Word in the Stone: The Official Blog of Leigh Whannel

Leigh Whannell (born 17 January 1977) is an Australian screenwriter, producer, director and actor. He is best known for writing films directed by his friend James Wan, including Saw (2004), Dead Silence (2007), Insidious (2011) and Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013). Whannell made his directorial debut on Insidious: Chapter 3, which was released in 2015.

Whannell and Wan are the creators of the Saw franchise. Whannel wrote the first installment, co-wrote the second and third installments, was producer or executive producer for all the films, and appeared as the "Adam Stanheight" character in four of the installments. He was also the writer of the Saw video game (2009), and co-writer of the 2014 film Cooties.

Whannell was born in Melbourne, Australia. He believes that he inherited his love of storytelling from his mother, and his fondness of filmmaking from his father, who was a cameraman in the television industry.

A writer since childhood, Whannell worked as a reporter and film critic for several Australian television shows, including ABC's Recovery, a Saturday morning youth-oriented program that was hosted by Dylan Lewis. Whannell has described the show in a 2011 blog post:

The result was that instead of following the usual MTV ideal of what teenagers want in a TV show—“Hey kids, coming up next we’ve got some seriously WICKED windsurfing moves!!”—Recovery managed to tap into the so-called “alternative” movement that was in full swing at the time by giving teenagers what they actually want: genuine, unpolished anarchy.