Born in Hollywood, he has spent much of his life in London, where he had early success writing plays for Ben Kingsley, Miranda Richardson, Richard E. Grant and others. He has won a number of major awards, including two BBC awards for Best Plays of the Year. He is the writer of the theatre version of Strangers on a Train (based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith) and this play is produced all over the world. He performed an extensive uncredited production rewrite on The Mists of Avalon for Warner Bros., which was later nominated for a Writers Guild Award for Best Adapted Long-Form Drama and nine Emmys (including Best Mini-Series), and he wrote Julius Caesar, again for Warner Bros., for which he was nominated for a Writers Guild Award for Best Original Long-Form Drama. He was nominated for a BAFTA (Best Single Drama) for his film The Queen's Sister, and The Last Day's of Lehman Brothers won him the award for Best Writer at the Seoul International Drama Awards in 2010.