Michael Crichton

Not unlike John Grisham, Chicago-born author-turned-director/screenwriter "Michael Crichton" took current events - often with a wealth of "authenticating" detail - and melded them with meticulously-constructed, gripping narratives that made him a white-hot commodity and a veritable one-man industry in Hollywood; Crichton's topical forte, however, lay not in the legal arena but in that of cutting-edge science. The son of an Advertising Age executive editor, Crichton grew up as the oldest in a family with four children, and reportedly (as one who reached 6' 7" at age 13 and grew to a towering height of 6', 9" as an adult) felt socially awkward and a bit out of place. Recreationally, he immersed himself in pop-culture and fell in love with Hitchcock. He entered Harvard as an undergraduate, and then Harvard Medical School, where he began turning out sensationalistic novels under various pseudonyms and... Full Biography