Peter Straughan

A British screenwriter, Peter Straughan is best known for penning the script for the lauded 2011 espionage drama "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" with his late wife, Bridget O'Connor. Straughan first made a name for himself as a playwright, working with the Live Theatre Company in Newcastle upon Tyne. His first major cinematic work was co-writing the screenplay for the 2006 coming-of-age film "Sixty Six" with O'Connor. The following year, Straughan and O'Connor's script for "Mrs. Ratcliffe's Revolution," an offbeat Communist-themed comedy, was made into a movie starring Catherine Tate and Iain Glen. Branching out on his own, Straughan adapted Toby Young's book "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People," though the resulting film, featuring Simon Pegg and Kirsten Dunst, proved to be commercially and critically unsuccessful. The writer pressed ahead with another quirky page-to-screen project, "The Men Who Stare at Goats," but, despite its A-list cast, including George Clooney and Ewan McGregor, it received a very mixed response. Collaborating with fellow scribes Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn, Straughan penned the decades-spanning thriller "The Debt," starring Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain as the same Israeli agent during different eras. Sticking to the world of espionage, he wrote the screenplay for the feature adaptation of John le Carré's "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" with O'Connor, though she died of cancer before the movie's release. Straughan went on to receive various awards for the script, which proved to be bittersweet, since his wife wasn't there to enjoy their success.