Edgar Award winners

Quentin Jerome Tarantino (born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by nonlinear storylines, dark humor, aestheticization of violence, extended scenes of dialogue, ensemble casts, references to popular culture and a wide variety of other films, eclectic soundtracks primarily containing songs and score pieces from the 1960s to the 1980s, alternate history, and features of neo-noir film.

Billy Bob Thornton (born August 4, 1955) is an American film actor, filmmaker, singer and songwriter. He received international attention after writing, directing and starring in the independent drama film Sling Blade (1996), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. For his role in A Simple Plan (1998) he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He is also known for his film roles in One False Move (1992), Tombstone (1993), Dead Man (1995), U Turn (1997), Primary Colors (1998), Armageddon (1998), Monster's Ball (2001), The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), Intolerable Cruelty (2003), Bad Santa (2003) and Friday Night Lights (2004).

Anthony Perkins (April 4, 1932 – September 12, 1992) was an American actor, director, and singer. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his second film, Friendly Persuasion (1956), but is best remembered for playing Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and its three sequels. His other films include Fear Strikes Out (1957), The Matchmaker (1958), On the Beach (1959), Tall Story (1960), The Trial (1962), Phaedra (1962), Five Miles to Midnight (1962), Pretty Poison (1968), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Mahogany (1975), The Black Hole (1979), North Sea Hijack (1980), and Crimes of Passion (1984).

Guy Stuart Ritchie (born 10 September 1968) is an English film director, producer, writer, and businessman. His work includes British gangster films and the Sherlock Holmes franchise.

David Edward Kelley (born April 4, 1956) is an American television writer, producer, and former attorney, known as the creator of Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, The Practice, Ally McBeal, Boston Public, Boston Legal, Harry's Law, Big Little Lies, and Mr. Mercedes, as well as several films. Kelley is one of very few screenwriters to have created shows aired on all four top commercial U.S. television networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC).

Stephen Joshua Sondheim (March 22, 1930 – November 26, 2021) was an American composer and lyricist. One of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, Sondheim has been praised for having “reinvented the American musical" with shows that tackle "unexpected themes that range far beyond the [genre's] traditional subjects" with "music and lyrics of unprecedented complexity and sophistication." His shows have been acclaimed for addressing "darker, more harrowing elements of the human experience," with songs often tinged with "ambivalence" about various aspects of life.

Truman Garcia Capote (born Truman Streckfus Persons, September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984) was an American novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966), which he labeled a "nonfiction novel". His works have been adapted into more than 20 films and television dramas.

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. His books have sold more than 350 million copies, and many have been adapted into films, television series, miniseries, and comic books. King has published 61 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books. He has also written approximately 200 short stories, most of which have been published in book collections.

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (née Miller; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime"—a moniker which is now trademarked by her estate—or the "Queen of Mystery". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.

John Randolph Webb (April 2, 1920 – December 23, 1982) was an American actor, television producer, director, and screenwriter, who is most famous for his role as Sgt. Joe Friday in the Dragnet franchise (which he created). He was also the founder of his own production company, Mark VII Limited.