John Singleton

John Singleton (born January 6, 1968, Los Angeles, California, U.S.—died April 29, 2019, Los Angeles) was an American film director and screenwriter whose films often examined urban and racial tensions. He was best known for his directorial debut, Boyz n the Hood (1991).

Singleton was raised near the violence-ridden south-central section of Los Angeles. While studying screenwriting at the University of Southern California, he won several writing awards, which led to his signing a contract with the Creative Artists Agency well before his 1990 graduation. As a student, Singleton wrote a coming-of-age screenplay— titled Boyz n the Hood—that chronicled the lives of three childhood friends growing up in the south-central area amid poverty and gang violence. It was filmed by Columbia Pictures and starred Cuba Gooding, Jr., Laurence Fishburne, and rapper-turned-actor Ice Cube. The film received widespread critical acclaim, rapidly accumulating accolades and awards. Singleton was nominated for Academy Awards for best screenplay and best director, making him the first African American to be nominated for the best director honour.

He followed up this success by directing pop superstar Michael Jackson in the music video for “Remember the Time” (1992). His next film, Poetic Justice (1993), starred Jackson’s sister, singer Janet Jackson. Singleton’s other films included Higher Learning (1995), a drama investigating a variety of social issues as it follows the lives of three college freshmen (1993); Rosewood (1997), based on a true story of racial violence in Florida in the 1920s; a remake of the landmark blaxploitation film Shaft (2000); the action film 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003); and Four Brothers (2005), starring Mark Wahlberg and Tyrese Gibson.

In the 2010s Singleton began working in television, and he directed episodes of such shows as Empire, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, and Billions. He cocreated Snowfall (2017– ), which centres on the crack epidemic in 1980s Los Angeles.