Warren Leight

Warren Leight
Leight at the 69th Annual Peabody Awards
Born	(1957-01-17) January 17, 1957 (age 60) Sunnyside, Queens, New York, U.S.
Other names	Warren D. Leight
Education	Stanford University, journalism, BS
Occupation	Television writer, play writer, director, executive producer
Years active	1980–present
Spouse(s)	Karen Hauser

Warren Leight (born January 17, 1957) is an American playwright, screenwriter, film director and television producer. He is best known for his work on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Lights Out and the showrunner for In Treatment and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. His play Side Man was a finalist for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Warren Leight was born to jazz trumpeter Don Leight (1923–2004), and his wife, Timmy, the second of two children. Both Warren and his older sister, Jody (born 1955), grew up with financial trouble and around clubs.

In the 1950s, his father played with jazz musicians such as Claude Thornhill, Woody Herman and Buddy Rich. Leight's grandfather, Larry, and paternal great-grandfather, Harry Gurovitch, were also trumpet players of Russian descent. He was raised in the Sunnyside section of the borough of Queens and the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Leight received a B.S. degree in communication from Stanford University in 1977, plannining a career as a journalist. Leight began his writing career with the 1980 horror film Mother's Day followed by the documentary Before the Nickelodeon: The Cinema of Edwin S. Porter (1982) (as the voice of "Terrible Teddy") the indie Stuck on You! (1983), and the Miramax filmThe Night We Never Met (1993), which he also directed, starring Matthew Broderick, and which earned him a nomination at the Deauville Film Festival. He wrote the screenplay for the 1996 Greg Kinnear comedy Dear God.

In the 1980s, he was the creative director/writer for a quartet of "witty" female comics known as the "High Heeled Women," which included actress Arleen Sorkin, who performed in cabarets in New York City.

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